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WISCONSIN 

AN EXPERIMENT IN DEMOCRACY 



BOOKS BY FREDERIC C. HOWE 

Published by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Wisconsin: An Experiment in Democracy. 

12mo net, $1.25 

Privilege and Democracy in America. 12mo 

net, SI. 50 

The British City: The Beginning of De= 

mocracy. 12mo . . net, $1.50 

The City: The Hope of Democracy. 12mo 

net, $1.50 



WISCONSIN 

AN EXPERIMENT IN DEMOCRACY 



BY 
FREDERIC C. HOWE, Ph.D. 

Ii 

AUTHOR OF "THE CITY: THE HOPE OF DEMOCBACt"; "THE BRITISH CITY: THE BEGINNING 

OF DEMOCRACY"; "PRIVILEGE AND DEMOCRACY IX AMERICA," ETC. 

FORMERLY LECTURER IN POLITICAL SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1912 






Copyright, 1912, bt 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

Published April, 1912 




©C1.A314104 



TO 
ROBERT MARION LA FOLLETTE 

WHOSE WORK IN WISCONSIN 

LAID THE FOUNDATIONS 

FOR A DEMOCRATIC COMMONWEALTH 



PREFACE 

Wisconsin is doing for America what Germany 
is doing for the world. It is an experiment station 
in politics, in social and industrial legislation, in 
the democratization of science and higher educa- 
tion. It is a state-wide laboratory in which popu- 
lar government is being tested in its reaction on 
people, on the distribution of wealth, on social well- 
being. 

The American state is probably our most con- 
spicuous political failure. It has not awakened 
the interest of reformers as has the city. Nor has 
it aroused the ambitions of men as has the national 
government. Some writers have suggested there is 
no place for a quasi-sovereign commonwealth in our 
governmental system. They look upon it as a 
political vermiform appendix that has outlived 
the functions it was designed to perform. Deci- 
sions of the courts have impaired the dignity which 
the state enjoyed before the Civil War, while the 
resentment of business to any kind of interference 
has depreciated the status of the state still further. 

Yet the state has wide possibilities. It controls 



Vll 



viii PREFACE 

the machinery of nomination and election for fed- 
eral, state, and municipal officials. Representatives 
in congress, United States senators, as well as candi- 
dates for President and Vice-President are nomi- 
nated as its laws provide. Cities have only such 
powers as the state permits them to enjoy. Munici- 
pal charters, the power to promote health, to control 
tenements, to supervise the franchise corporations, 
issue from the state. Home rule, commission 
government, the form of the ballot, the initiative 
and referendum and recall, are all of its providing. 
So is the right of suffrage. The success or failure 
of the city is traceable to the laws which the state 
enacts. 

If the state is corrupt, the cities will reflect its 
conditions. Nor can the national government rise 
above its source. It will mirror the machinery of 
nomination and election, as well as the character 
of the legislature, which selects the members of the 
United States senate. 

The state is the source of civil and criminal law, 
of domestic and industrial relations. It is the 
guardian of the peace, of the health and education 
of the people. It controls the roads and highways. 
It regulates the railroads and common carriers. 
Industrial and labor legislation fall within its juris- 
diction, as does the care of women and child workers. 



PREFACE ix 

Its taxing power is ample to promote a social policy. 
Only the federal taxes are denied to it. It can 
tax and through taxation destroy, as it does in the 
liquor business. It controls education. Our west- 
ern states have developed a comprehensive pro- 
gramme of higher education. They are extending 
it to all classes by extension teaching and the appli- 
cation of scientific methods to agriculture. The 
indigent, unfortunate, and criminal classes are wards 
of the state, while the promotion of almost any 
policy for the improvement of social conditions is 
within its power. 

Wisconsin has raised the state from the low 
estate into which it had fallen and converted it into 
a vital political agency. It is utilizing the latent 
powers of commonwealth building. Twenty years 
ago Wisconsin was not unlike other states. Its 
legislature was discredited and corrupt. The bien- 
nial bartering of legislation, of place and privilege, 
the boss and machine control were not dissimilar 
from conditions disclosed in other states. All 
this has passed away. In a few years time Wis- 
consin has become the most efficient commonwealth 
in the Union. Of the honesty of the legislative and 
administrative departments there is no question. 
Executive offices are filled with trained men who 
are animated by enthusiasm for the public service. 



x PREFACE 

The state university, situated at the state capital, 
is a scientific research bureau, using its faculty and 
equipment in the service of the state. Professors 
are connected with almost every department of pub- 
lic administration. State problems are studied in 
the schools of politics, of agriculture, of mechanical 
engineering. Experts from the university are em- 
ployed on railway, taxation, and industrial problems, 
and in extending the influence of the university 
throughout the state. Extension study has been 
developed into a serious rather than a recreative 
pursuit, while farming has been made a highly 
profitable vocation through the activity of the agri- 
cultural department. The university is largely 
responsible for the progressive legislation that has 
made Wisconsin so widely known as a pioneer. 

Wisconsin has carried democracy farther than 
any state save Oregon. It has adopted simple 
direct primary laws, with the second choice, for all 
elective officials. It has provided for the direct 
nomination of United States senators, for a presi- 
dential primary and the control of corrupt practices, 
and the use of money in elections. Constitutional 
amendments have been approved by the legislature 
for the initiative and referendum and the recall. 
The question of woman's suffrage has been sub- 
mitted to the people. The railway and public 



PREFACE xi 

utility laws are models which have been widely 
copied by other states. 

Scientific thoroughness characterizes politics as 
in no other place in America. Legislation is pre- 
ceded by exact knowledge of the abuses to be cor- 
rected and the ends to be achieved. Laws are 
made as simple and direct as possible. The poli- 
tician has almost disappeared from the state-house. 
He does not thrive in this atmosphere. There is 
little partisan thinking, and little partisan legisla- 
tion. There is an enthusiasm among officials that 
is a high tribute to the state. Men think in terms 
of Wisconsin. Permanent party ties have been 
greatly weakened. Voters support men and meas- 
ures, rather than empty emblems. The people 
themselves reflect the new motives in politics. 

Wisconsin has developed a comprehensive social 
programme for the protection of the working classes 
through insurance against accident, by provision for 
the regulation of factories and unsanitary conditions. 
It has adopted the German idea of continuation 
schools, and borrowed the labor exchange from Ger- 
many and England. The state insures its own prop- 
erty against fire, it offers state life insurance to its 
citizens. It has developed a forestry policy and 
is planning a comprehensive programme of state 
conservation through a board of public affairs. 



xii PREFACE 

Just as the German burgomaster builds with a 
far-seeing vision to promote the comfort, the con- 
venience, the health, the beauty of his city; just 
as the German empire has been consciously develop- 
ing the education, training, and efficiency of its 
people, just as the state-owned railways, water-ways, 
harbors, forests, and mineral resources are used for 
the upbuilding of the fatherland; just as Denmark 
has consciously set about to become the world's 
dairy farm and agricultural experiment station; 
just as New Zealand and Australia are types of 
industrial and social democracy, so Wisconsin is 
building a commonwealth in a conscious, far-seeing, 
intelligent way. It is becoming an experiment sta- 
tion for America. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Preface vii 

I. La Follette, The Builder 3 

II. Laying the Foundations of Democracy 25 

III. Calling in the Expert 38 

IV. Completing the Structure of Democracy ... 51 

V. Regulating the Railroads and Public Utility 

Corporations 67 

VI. Shifting the Costs of Human Injury 86 

VII. The Industrial Commission 104 

VIII. State Insurance 118 

IX. Commonwealth Building 126 

X. Equalizing the Tax Burdens 133 

XI. The Democratization of Learning .140 

XII. The Brain of the Commonwealth 151 

XIII. Sending the Farmer to College 164 

XIV. An Experiment Station in Farm Eugenics . . . 174 

XV. Conclusion . . 183 

Bibliography of Important Laws and Literature 

on Wisconsin 193 

Index 197 



WISCONSIN 

AN EXPERIMENT IN DEMOCRACY 



CHAPTER I 
LA FOLLETTE, THE BUILDER 

Twenty years ago Wisconsin was not unlike Penn- 
sylvania, New York, Ohio, Indiana, or Illinois. It 
had its bosses, who gave the people such government 
as suited their personal and business interests. The 
state was a feudatory of the railway, lumber, and 
franchise interests, which, with the machine of fed- 
eral office-holders, nominated and elected governors, 
United States senators and congressmen, who, in 
turn, made use of their power to enrich their creators. 
Federal and state patronage was used for the same 
ends. The biennial session of the legislature was 
a carnival of legislation for the benefit of the few. 
Politics was a privileged trade, into which ambitious 
men entered only when approved by the state ma- 
chine. Few believed any other methods were pos- 
sible, and no one challenged the rule of the oligarchy 
which distributed elective as well as appointive 
offices for the maintenance of its political and indus- 
trial power. There was no organized protest. The 
press was indifferent or controlled. The great fort- 
unes of the state had been made from timber taken 

from government lands, from railroad and franchise 

3 



4 WISCONSIN 

corporation promotion, and from building contracts 
identified with these interests. 

Privilege was woven into every fibre of the state, 
as it was in most of the states of the Union. It had 
been so for a quarter of a century. 

Robert M. La Follette challenged this system al- 
most immediately after he graduated from the Uni- 
versity of Wisconsin. He had practised law for three 
months, and then decided he wanted to be district 
attorney. He was then twenty-five years of age. 
, That was in 1880. E. W. Keyes was the most power- 
ful man in the state, a maker of governors and United 
States senators, and a national political figure. He 
was generally known as "Boss Keyes." Dane 
County was the least of his feudal possessions, but 
he prized it the most. He carried it in his vest pocket, 
and his control had never been questioned. And he 
had a candidate of his own for the office of district 
attorney. He might have picked young La Follette 
for the office had he sought it by the regular route. 
But La Follette had a way of his own. It was novel 
in Wisconsin, novel anywhere in America. La 
Follette decided to go to the people directly. He 
went out into the townships among the farmers. He 
had a horse, and he borrowed a harness and buggy. 
He needed no introduction to his constituents, for 
the year before he had won the interstate oratorical 
contest against the best orators from the colleges of 
seven states. On his return he was met in triumph 



LA FOLLETTE, THE BUILDER 5 

by students and towns-people, who carried him on 
their shoulders to the university, and in the evening 
gave him a reception at the state-house. He had 
brought renown to the university and the state. The 
farmers had read of his success in the papers; many 
of them had been in Madison on the day of his tri- 
umph. They knew, too, of his struggles, of how he 
had worked his way through college by teaching, by 
doing odd jobs, and by editing a college paper. 

La Follette had a real issue even then. The district 
attorney then in office had put the county to great 
expense by employing outside lawyers to try his 
cases. La Follette said he would do all the work 
himself. 

Keyes and the county organization sneered at the 
young candidate. They contemptuously termed him 
and his friends the "night riders/ ' because they con- 
ducted their campaign on horseback, day and night, 
out in the country among the people. But when the 
caucuses were over, the people were in control. The 
farmers had believed the promises of the young can- 
didate and enjoyed being taken into the game. They 
had never heard of the "interests," but they could 
neither be bought nor bullied into deserting La 
Follette. He was nominated, and later elected by a 
majority of ninety-three votes, the Democratic nom- 
inee being his law preceptor in whose office he had 
studied a few months before. 

La Follette kept his pledges. He tried his own 



6 WISCONSIN 

cases, and he won his spurs. Before many months 
the ablest lawyers in the state were called in against 
him. Even then he was thorough. He was an inde- 
fatigable worker. Night after night he remained in 
his office until long into the morning hours. He 
rarely brought a case until sure of the facts. And he 
never tried it until he had mastered every detail of 
the law and the evidence. On the expiration of his 
first term he was renominated and again elected, this 
time being the only Republican on the county ticket 
to pull through. 

La Follette enjoyed politics. He relished public 
work. When his second term expired there was an 
opening in his congressional district. It was not 
Dane County's turn to have the nomination, and 
hhe bosses had a candidate of their own. One day 
one of them said to him, " I hear you are going to be 
a candidate for congress. Don't you think it is pre- 
sumptuous for you to be a candidate without con- 
sulting us?" 

La Follette replied that he didn't know why he 
should consult any one but the people. Four years 
before he had learned a lesson, a lesson he has re- 
membered for thirty-two years. For he has always 
gone back to the people. And he and his "night 
riders" went out among the people again. The 
farmers knew of his legal victories, knew he had 
justified their confidence, and relished being con- 
sulted at the caucuses as they were at the polls. La 



LA FOLLETTE, THE BUILDER 7 

Follette was nominated and elected to congress with 
a majority of 491. He knew very little about state 
or national politics. I doubt if he had any vision 
other than that of doing his work and winning his 
way. He just wanted the office. But his Scotch- 
Irish-Huguenot stock would not permit him to bow 
his neck to get it. 

La Follette has always been inflexible in matters 
involving principles. Time has not weakened his in- 
sistence on issues which he holds to be fundamental. 
Nor have his contests been personal. They have al- 
ways been identified with large issues. And to-day, 
after thirty-two years of ceaseless conflict, and at an 
age when most men seek peace and quiet, La Follette 
is still a dynamo, throbbing with restrained convic- 
tion for the things he holds to be true. His body is 
short and stocky, his frame close knit like that of a 
Japanese wrestler. His muscles are hard. Out from 
a face that is still youthful, blue-gray eyes smile 
friendship or flash indignation. He talks with en- 
thusiasm. When moved, his voice is resonant with 
suppressed feeling. The personality of the man sug- 
gests compact, harnessed force. 

La Follette went to Washington at a time when 
the tariff interests, railroads, and land-grabbers were 
unchallenged in their control of congress. The great 
West seemed a limitless domain that could never be 
peopled, nor its resources exhausted. Population had 
crossed the Mississippi, but unnumbered millions of 



8 WISCONSIN 

acres still invited the homesteader. Railroads seek- 
ing land grants got what they wanted for the asking. 
The senior senator from Wisconsin was Philetus 
Sawyer. He was a multi-millionaire lumberman and 
one of the bosses of the state. Sawyer took La Fol- 
lette to call on the President and members of the 
cabinet. He introduced him as "our boy." La Fol- 
lette was still young, scarcely thirty, and it was pleas- 
ant to be noticed in this way by a United States 
senator. Presently a bulky bill granting rights of 
way across the Sioux Indian Reservation to the 
Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul and the Chicago 
and Northwestern railways came before his com- 
mittee. It made generous grants to the railroads, 
and La Follette protested that they included town 
sites which were not essential to a right of way. His 
neighbor on the committee whispered suggestively: 
"But those are your home corporations." 

"Yes," said La Follette, "but I suppose I ought 
to be as careful about our home corporations as for- 
eign ones." 

Senator Sawyer sent for him. He said : " You know, 
Bob, that Sioux Indian bill provides for our folks, the 
St. Paul and the Northwestern railroads. I want 
you to look after it." "I will," said La Follette, 
"after I have amended it, but I don't think the bill is 
right." 

In forty-eight hours, Henry C. Payne, chairman of 
the Wisconsin State Central Committee and chief 



LA FOLLETTE, THE BUILDER 9 

lobbyist for the St. Paul Railroad, arrived in Wash- 
ington. Payne was angry. He labored with La Fol- 
lette. The next day one of La Follette's colleagues 
in the house said: "Bob, you have trouble on your 
hands. Henry Payne was giving you the devil at 
the hotel last night. He said you were a fool if you 
thought you could oppose railroads, with 5,000 miles 
of track, running through your district." 

La Follette was young. At that time most men 
believed, as Sawyer said to him, that "the railroads 
had a hard time of it." It would have been very 
easy to drift with the crowd. For the country ac- 
quiesced in the land grants and subsidies granted the 
Pacific railroads as an aid to the development of the 
West. 

La Follette queried: "Can't a fellow do what he 
thinks is right down here? If I can't I'm going back 
home and practise law." 

The bill was defeated, but the railroads did not 
forget. They strengthened their machine at home 
and prepared to prevent La Follette's renomination. 
But La Follette was renominated and re-elected for 
three successive terms. Then he went down to de- 
feat in the Democratic landslide of 1890. 

When his last term expired in 1891, La Follette's 
law business had gone to pieces, but by the end of 
three months he had organized a firm which in a short 
time was on a prosperous basis. Professional success 
was easy. The premiership of the Wisconsin bar was 



10 WISCONSIN 

La Follette's for the taking, for he had an immediate 
success as an advocate. But political life was inevit- 
able. It lured him. He was the natural heir to the 
leadership of his party in the state, when a politi- 
cal tragedy threw him into the bitterest fight of his 
life. It raised up powerful enemies who never for- 
gave. 

For years the state treasurers of Wisconsin had 
been loaning the state's money to favored banks 
without interest. The attorney-general brought suit 
to recover hundreds of thousands of dollars of back 
interest. Senator Sawyer was bondsman of many 
treasurers. He was sued personally for $300,000. 
The case was pending before Judge Robert J. Sie- 
becker, a brother-in-law and former law partner of 
La Follette. Sawyer was alarmed. He sent a note 
to La Follette, asking him to meet him in the 
Plankington Hotel, Milwaukee. Thinking it was a 
political appointment, La Follette met him in the 
hotel parlor. Sawyer and La Follette told different 
stories about what happened. Sawyer said he en- 
deavored to employ La Follette as his attorney in 
the case; La Follette said he crowded a bunch of bills 
into his hands and said there was that much more 
coming if Judge Siebecker decided the cases "right." 
What happened became public. Senator Sawyer 
made a statement which called forth a denial from 
La Follette. The state won its case. It recovered a 
large sum of money as back interest, but La Follette 



LA FOLLETTE, THE BUILDER 11 

had won the undying enmity of the most powerful 
man in the state. Not only that; he split the party 
asunder, for the " interests " and the machine re- 
solved to destroy him for daring to speak out. 

Had it not been for the Sawyer incident, La Fol- 
lette would quite naturally have slipped into the 
governorship or the senate. He was a good cam- 
paigner, a splendid organizer, and he almost always 
won. After the Sawyer episode his political demise 
was universally predicted. He probably would have 
been retired had he not immediately taken the stump 
against the protests of the members of the organiza- 
tion. That was in 1892. They said he would be 
mobbed by the Sawyer men; that there was sure to 
be trouble. The whole state was in a white heat of 
excitement. La Follette had been vilified by the 
newspapers, many of which were subsidized then as 
they were during the next ten years. But he replied, 
that he would go to the meetings if he had to carry a 
gun and lay it on the table before him. His meetings 
were packed. He had no interruptions. His courage 
set at rest any question as to the integrity of his 
motives. 

Then began an eight years' war to free a common- 
wealth; a war that drove one after another of the old 
bosses out of office; that stamped out machine poli- 
tics and corruption, that sent an insurgent delegation 
to congress; that perfected the machinery of govern- 
ment, regulated the railroads and public service cor- 



12 WISCONSIN 

porations; that placed them on the tax list on the 
same basis as other property and laid the foundations 
for what is probably the most intelligent, free-minded, 
independent, and progressive commonwealth in 
America. 

La Follette had learned much by this time, but he 
was to learn more. In 1894 he cast about for a can- 
didate for governor. He sent out 1,500 personal 
letters requesting an expression of opinion on the 
candidacy of Nils P. Haugen, one of his colleagues 
in congress. The response was so satisfactory that 
Haugen consented to be a candidate, although it 
probably meant the permanent sacrifice of his seat 
in congress. 

For six weeks the lights were rarely permitted to 
go out in La Follette's office. He slept on the floor 
with his law books for a pillow, and, with dynamo- 
like energy, forced the fighting all over the state. 
Haugen was defeated, but the little band of delegates 
nominated every other candidate on the ticket. 

For two years La Follette practised law and con- 
tinued to build sentiment back among the people. 
He cast about for another candidate, but was unable 
to find any one to undertake the contest against the 
organization. Finally, he said he would go on with 
the fight if he had to be a candidate himself. When 
he announced himself a jeer went up over the state. 
The machine said it would "eat him up." But a 
brigade of young supporters began to pour into his 



LA FOLLETTE, THE BUILDER 13 

office. Stenographers worked for their employers all 
day, and then worked for the cause at night. 

The La Follette forces went into the convention 
with enough delegates instructed and pledged to nom- 
inate their candidate on the first ballot. But the 
delegates were lured away by money and promise of 
place. Scores of them signed affidavits of attempted 
bribery. Pfister, the boss of Milwaukee, told La 
Follette they had him beaten, but if he would take 
his medicine and be quiet, they would take care of 
him when the time came. La Follette replied that 
he would take care of himself. But the organization 
beat him the next day in the convention as they had 
beaten Haugen two years before. 

La Follette saw the difficulties of the delegate and 
convention system. The people were honest, but 
those whom they chose to represent them at the con- 
vention betrayed their instructions. Then he began 
the study of means to supersede the convention and 
the caucus with some other method of making nomi- 
nations. There were no compulsory primary laws in 
the United States. Nominations were made by cau- 
cuses and conventions, just as they are to-day in 
many states. Delegates honestly chosen by the peo- 
ple sell out the people, and candidates nominated by 
the bosses and big interests behind the bosses serve 
those who nominate them, rather than the people 
who elect them. This is what they had done in Wis- 
consin. And La Follette saw that the delegate sys- 



14 WISCONSIN 

tern must be destroyed before any other progress 
was possible. 

In 1898, La Follette plunged into the gubernatorial 
contest for a third time. He was the general and 
the commissariat of the movement. He crystallized 
his issues about the direct primary, the abolition of 
railroad passes, the curbing of the lobby, and the tax- 
ation of railroads at their full value. Again he was 
defeated for the nomination. But this time the ma- 
chine accepted the La Follette platform. He had 
scored a moral victory. His reforms could not long 
be delayed. The people of the state were aroused, 
and when Scofield's administration temporized and 
failed to enact the measures to which it was pledged, 
a call went up to La Follette to be a candidate again. 
The machine was as bitter as ever. By all the rules 
of the game, defeat should have suppressed this 
troublesome agitator, but he kept right on, and in 
1900 he was nominated and elected by the unprece- 
dented plurality of 103,745. 

La Follette was elected governor for three succes- 
sive terms, in 1900, 1902, and 1904. Unable to de- 
stroy him as an agitator, the machine decided to 
wreck him as a builder, to discredit him by failure. 
All of the power of the federal and state organiza- 
tions was thrown against the primary election bill, as 
was every influence that the public service corpora- 
tions could command. The state senate was organ- 
ized against him. It defeated the primary bill, as 



LA FOLLETTE, THE BUILDER 15 

well as the measures for equalizing the taxes of rail- 
ways. In derision, the legislature enacted a bill im- 
posing a license fee on dogs. But La Follette turned 
this sneer into a reproof by a message that went 
ringing round the state. 

Many men would have abandoned the field, dis- 
heartened by failure. And failure was the argument 
now used against the governor. Sickness, too, laid 
its hand upon him. The winter had been one of kill- 
ing work, for, as in his district-attorney days, he 
seemed to need no sleep. His old enemy, his stomach, 
suddenly suspended operations. There were rumors 
of physical decline. Then he pulled himself together; 
set himself to the task of conserving his own life, and 
for years lived upon the rigorous and abstemious diet I 
of toast, milk, and one or two vegetables. 

Privilege closed the news channels against him. 
Inspired editorials, news-letters, and cartoons were 
distributed to 300 newspapers in the state, which 
were paid from $50 to $1,500 to use their columns 
against him. By the fall La Follette was on the 
stump again. His followers were now known as 
"Half-Breeds." This was an epithet of contempt. 
In time it became a name to be proud of. 

Always poor, La Follette entered the campaign 
of 1902 with a debt of $15,000 hanging over him, the 
savings of years swept away, and only his indomi- 
table resolution and the affection of the people to sus- 
tain him. Every possible abuse was heaped upon 



16 WISCONSIN 

him. The manufacturing, business, and commercial 
interests were lined up with the railroads. He was 
driving out capital, it was said. The state was suffer- 
ing from demagogic agitation. His defeat was de- 
manded to avert industrial ruin. 

But the victory was easy. La Follette was nomi- 
nated on the first ballot and elected by a majority 
of 47,599. 

The senate was "Stalwart' 7 and hostile, as before. 
But public opinion was behind the primary bill. The 
legislature could no longer withstand the pressure 
from the folks back home. The measure was finally 
enacted. Nor could the bill for the taxation of rail- 
roads be longer delayed. The inequalities were too 
glaring. Then after fighting it for years the railroads 
naively said: "Oh, well, it doesn't make very much 
difference to us, for if you increase our taxes we will 
simply increase our rates and so make the people pay 
the increased taxes." 

This was an unfortunate threat to lodge in La 
Follette's mind. It was the seed that gave birth to 
his next great constructive reform, the regulation of 
railway rates and charges by a utility commission. 
For, if the railroads could thwart justice in this way, 
it was necessary that their arbitrary rate-making 
power be controlled. La Follette worked out the 
doctrine that railway rates should be fixed by a com- 
mission and at such a point as would yield a fair re- 
turn on the property actually employed in the ser- 



LA FOLLETTE, THE BUILDER 17 

vice. To accomplish this it was necessary that rail- 
road property should be valued. This was his great 
contribution to the railway question. It has become 
the central feature in his railway programme in 
national affairs. 

The problem was confused by all sorts of legal 
questions, and La Follette was finishing his second 
term. There was a tradition against a third term in 
Wisconsin, and the railroads were able to muster 
enough votes to defeat the railway commission bill. 
But by so doing they gave La Follette an issue. They 
made it necessary to appeal to the people again. His 
work was incomplete and would be as long as the 
menacing power of arbitrary freight rates lay uncon- 
trolled in the railroads' hands. Another campaign 
followed. It has been estimated that hundreds of 
thousands of dollars were spent to defeat him for re- 
election. But La Follette carried the relentless logic 
of statistics to the county fairs and showed the peo- 
ple how they were being plundered by discriminating 
freight rates and charges. The convention of this 
year (1904) resulted in a split, the " Stalwarts" nom- 
inating a ticket of their own. Litigation followed. 
But the La Follette ticket was declared to be regular. 
He was again elected, this time by a majority of 
40,000 in spite of the third ticket placed in the field 
by the "Stalwart" Republican organization. 

There was a vacancy to be filled in the United 
States senate. La Follette was chosen by the legis- 



18 WISCONSIN 

lature, but declined to relinquish his post as governor 
until his programme was complete. The railway 
commission bill was passed, both parties uniting on 
the measure. A special session was later called (1905) 
to rivet down the railway bills, which had been defied 
by the railroads. Additional laws were enacted, and 
within the next forty days the railroads paid into the 
state treasury over $1,000,000 in tax arrearages. 

It is as an orator, an agitator, a fighter, that La 
Follette is most widely known, but it is as a common- 
wealth builder that he has best served the country. 
He has always had a programme of legislation, a 
programme that made for democracy, for liberty, for 
the square deal. 

The legislation with which he is identified in Wis- 
consin has served as a model wherever the progressive 
movement has gained a foothold. The direct pop- 
ular primary has spread from state to state. Through 
it representative government has been vivified in 
city, state, and nation. Congress has reflected it 
within the past four years. The states of Kansas, 
Nebraska, California, Iowa, Michigan, New Jersey, 
and others have had the breath of democracy 
breathed into them by means of this agency for ex- 
pressing the popular will. 

This was his first great achievement. It made 
others possible. Through it the politics of Wisconsin 
have been purified. The state has been educated on 
political questions, and party lines have been broken 



LA FOLLETTE, THE BUILDER 19 

down. Politics have become the ambition of a new 
type of men. University graduates are rilling the 
state legislature, while the Wisconsin delegation in 
Washington has for years reflected the new ideals of 
the state. 

The railway commission bill was followed by a 
public utility measure which has served as a model 
for other states. The appointees to the commission 
have been eminent lawyers or students of the subject. 
Public service corporations in Wisconsin are now sub- 
ject, not sovereign. Their physical property has 
been valued as the basis for rates and charges. The 
valuation for rate-making is the valuation for tax- 
ation. Public service corporations are not permitted 
to play both ends against the middle; to report a 
watered valuation as the basis of rates and charges 
and another valuation for the purpose of taxation. 

Far from injuring property, these measures have 
given the securities of public service corporations a 
better standing and security than in other states. 
They sell better. Bankers advertise them as issued 
under the public utility law. At the same time, 
cities are protected from the corrupting influences of 
the franchise corporations and the shipper from ex- 
cessive railway rates. 

For eight years La Follette had to fight the state 
machine built upon the spoils of office. When he be- 
came governor, this patronage was his to use as he 
willed. He might have built up a machine and made 



20 WISCONSIN 

his position impregnable. But he threw this advan- 
tage away and enacted a civil service law placing 
the public service of the state on a merit basis. 

It is probably no exaggeration to say that 
the educational system of Wisconsin is the most 
democratic in the world. It is also one of the most 
wonderful. The spirit of La Follette is responsible 
for this. He liberalized the board of regents and 
brought about the selection of Charles R. Van Hise 
as president of the state university. The university 
has been linked with the capitol so that trained uni- 
versity men co-operate with or serve upon the state 
commissions. Work done by political " heelers " in 
other states is assigned to advanced college students, 
while the spirit of co-operation between political and 
educational agencies is like that which obtains in 
Germany. 

When La Follette entered the senate in 1906 he 
was alone. His voice was as one in a wilderness. He 
was a pagan, desecrating the sacred precincts of the 
temple of privilege. That was the feeling of official 
Washington. He broke the traditions of the senate 
and before the close of the first session had spoken a 
score of times on a dozen important measures. He 
discovered a " joker" in a bill to sell the lands of the 
civilized Indian tribes of Indian Territory to the rail- 
ways. They already had a lease on 107,000 acres, 
and this would have given them the balance of the 
coal lands in the territory. They were to pay prac- 



LA FOLLETTE, THE BUILDER 21 

tically nothing for them. In a debate against the 
bill which lasted two days he struck the first note on 
conservation. He showed how the railroads had ob- 
tained leases in violation of law; how the coal de- 
posits of the country were fast passing under their 
control, leaving the consumer absolutely at their 
mercy. His protest saved the coal lands and mineral 
resources to the nation. They are estimated to con- 
tain five billion tons of coal and to be worth hundreds 
of millions, possibly billions, of dollars. 

He offered an amendment to a pending bill to give 
the Interstate Commerce Commission control over 
the capitalization of new corporations as a means of 
preventing overcapitalization. His place in the sen- 
ate was made, however, by a speech on the Hepburn 
rate bill, which overhauled the powers of the Inter- 
state Commerce Commission. He knew the rail- 
road question, for he had been studying it with 
thoroughness for years. It was during this speech 
that old members of the senate tried to haze him by 
emptying the chamber. But La Follette had been 
trained in too hard a school to be concerned over 
such petty tactics. He said: 

"Mr. President, I pause in my remarks to say 
this: I cannot be wholly indifferent to the fact that 
senators, by their absence at this time, indicate their 
want of interest in what I may have to say upon this 
subject. The public is interested. Unless this im- 
portant question is rightly settled, seats now tern- 



22 WISCONSIN 

porarily vacant may be permanently vacated by 
those who have the right to occupy them at this 
time." 

His words were prophetic. He was alone in the 
senate six years ago. To-day there are more than a 
dozen members of his own party, and nearly as many 
more Democrats, who occupy some of the seats then 
"temporarily" vacant. 

Although alone in the senate, La Follette was 
building even then. By an amendment to a pending 
bill he established the doctrine of comparative negli- 
gence in railway employment. Under the federal de- 
cisions an employer had only to show that the em- 
ployee was guilty of negligence to defeat his action 
for personal injuries. Under the amendment, neg- 
ligence of the employee is no longer a bar to recovery 
if it can be shown that the employee's negligence was 
less than that of the employer's. 

He also brought about a limitation of the hours of 
service of railway employees by a bill which pro- 
vided that no employee should be kept on duty more 
than sixteen consecutive hours, nor allowed to return 
to work before eight hours of rest had intervened. 
At a subsequent session he secured an amendment to 
the postal appropriation bill requiring the lighting 
of mail cars by electricity, thus protecting to some 
degree life and property from fire. He also secured 
another amendment which changed the old method of 
railway mail pay, under which the railroads received 



LA FOLLETTE, THE BUILDER 23 

nearly $5,000,000 a year more than they were en- 
titled to. 

When the Payne- Aldrich tariff bill was up for dis- 
cussion, La Follette was a leader in the insurgent 
protest against it. He was one of those who finally 
voted against it, at which time he made the follow- 
ing prophecy: 

"When I began this fight in this chamber four 
years ago in behalf of the public interest and against 
the forces of special privilege, I stood alone as a Re- 
publican senator. Now there are ten of us engaged 
in the same fight. I warn you that if you refuse to 
consider every proposition advanced in behalf of the 
public and carry out your determination to make this 
tariff legislation but the instrument by which special 
interests may, through special privilege, enrich them- 
selves by unjust exactions from the public, the pub- 
lic will hold you responsible and prove its resentment 
as certainly as elections are held." 

The returns from the polls in 1910 justified this 
prediction. 

Though a Republican, La Follette is a Democrat 
with a small "d." His democracy is economic, in- 
dustrial, social. It is based on an understanding of 
the fact that the law-maker, not the law-breaker, is 
primarily at fault. The abolition of special privilege 
is his economic creed. He says: 

"Honest wealth needs no guarantee of security in 
this country. Property rightfully acquired does not 



24 WISCONSIN 

beget fear — it fosters independence, confidence, cour- 
age. Property which is the fruit of plunder feels in- 
secure. It is timid. It is quick to cry for help. It is 
ever proclaiming the sacredness of vested rights. The 
thief can have no vested rights in stolen property. 
I resent the assumption that the great wealth of this 
country is only safe when the millionaires are on 
guard. Property rights are not the special charge of 
owners of great fortunes. The ample power of the 
constitution is the everlasting bulwark of honest 
property rights." 

The moral and political forces, which LaFollette 
set in motion, have remained the forces which have 
animated the subsequent building of the state. 



CHAPTER II 
LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS OF DEMOCRACY 

The five years from 1906 to 1911 were an inter- 
regnum in which the state was catching up with it- 
self. Fourteen years of warfare, waged on both sides 
to extermination, had left bitterness and suspicions 
that only time could soften. Republicans and Demo- 
crats had forgotten party ties in the feudal warfare 
between democracy and special privilege which had 
overshadowed everything else. Everybody took 
sides. Every one was a "Stalwart" or a "Half- 
Breed." The whole state was divided into bitter 
factions. 

When La Follette entered the senate, in January, 
1906, the powers of privilege were discredited but 
not destroyed. Defeat still rankled. Railways and 
public service corporations had been chastened, but 
they resented their exile from the ascendency they 
had long enjoyed. Old leaders hoped for a return to 
power. There was a minority in the legislature ready 
to retrace the steps it had unwillingly taken, while 
business men still feared the calamities which they 
had been assured would follow the railway, taxation, 
and insurance legislation which had been enacted. 

25 



26 WISCONSIN 

This fear extended to manufacturers, shippers, and 
small business men, who had been sedulously en- 
couraged in this belief by the larger interests. 

Foundations had been laid for the building of a 
commonwealth, but no one could tell whether the 
state would complete the structure. Many feared a 
popular reaction, a desire for peace and quiet on any 
terms. For democracy insists on taking its time, 
on not being crowded beyond its capacity. Such 
struggles as rent Wisconsin are followed by reaction 
unless the people themselves make the issues, as 
they do in Oregon under the initiative and refer- 
endum. And, it must be remembered, Wisconsin 
was far out on the skirmish line in the progressive 
movement, which has since become nation wide in 
scope. 

A defect was shortly disclosed in the machinery of 
the primary law, which permitted plurality rather 
than majority nominations. There was no provision 
for a second choice. By reason of this, privileged 
interests were able to concentrate their support upon 
a candidate of their choice, while the progressive 
vote was distributed among a number. Isaac Ste- 
phenson was nominated for the United States senate 
by such a division. This condition was remedied in 
1911 by an amendment to the primary law providing 
for majority nominations through a second choice. 

Aside from this, the direct primary worked well. A 
higher class of men have entered the legislature than 



LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS 27 

before. The state-wide campaigns of La Follette 
had aroused the people to an interest in political 
questions, and awakened many young men to par- 
ticipation in public affairs. They aspired to the legis- 
lature, to county and city offices. Under the direct 
primary, politics is free from boss control and ad- 
vancement is possible. During these years the char- 
acter of the assembly steadily improved. For the 
most part it has become a body of earnest and hon- 
est men. There has been little suggestion of the cor- 
ruption which many of our states accept as a natural 
biennial shame. Wisconsin has apparently put be- 
hind her such conditions as have disgraced recent 
sessions of the legislatures of New York, Ohio, Illi- 
nois, and other states. The lobby has changed its 
character. It is no longer venal and secret; it is in- 
tellectual and open. An anti-lobby law was passed 
in 1905 which limited any paid lobbyist or legislative 
agent to oral or printed arguments presented to legis- 
lative committees or to the legislature in a body. 
Lobbyists are required to register their names and 
the interests or corporations which they represent 
with the secretary of state, and these names are 
posted on a bulletin-board in the assembly lobby, 
or read by the clerk of both houses of the legislature. 
At the end of the session the lobbyist must make 
public the amount of money expended and the pur- 
poses for which it was used. The last session of the 
assembly enacted a law directed against log-rolling 



28 WISCONSIN 

or trading in votes by legislators, either with the 
governor or with members of the assembly. 

The railroad and public utility lobby, which swarms 
about the capitals of our states during a legislative 
session, has been reduced in number and changed in 
character by the transfer of many legislative ques- 
tions to the railroad and tax commissions. Questions 
of rates and charges, of services and improvements 
are argued before these commissions by experts or 
lawyers much as they are in court. The industrial 
commission law, enacted by the last legislature, will 
remove the manufacturers and employers in the same 
way. These commissions are filled with men of 
unimpeachable honesty and recognized ability. 

It is no longer necessary for corporations to con- 
tribute to campaign funds, to seek to control nomi- 
nations or elections, or to maintain a corrupt lobby 
to protect their interests. Cities have been freed 
from the distracting activities of franchise corpora- 
tions by the public utility commission, which regu- 
lates these corporations. Their accounts are public, 
they are subject to investigation, they are protected 
from assault, while their property has been placed 
on the tax duplicate by state officials acting in har- 
mony with the state railway commission. 

Wisconsin has removed the chief cause of corrup- 
tion from city and state, and by so doing has purged 
its politics of corruption. Special interests have little 
to fear or gain from the legislature. They have come 



LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS 29 

to trust in the honesty and fairness of the expert com- 
missions created for their regulation. 

The spoils system has been abolished by the en- 
actment of a thorough-going merit system. There 
is no patronage to be distributed by governors or 
mayors. A civil service law was approved by La 
Follette while governor against the opposition of 
many of his friends, who termed it a self-denying 
ordinance; a quixotic relinquishment of means for 
firmly establishing the progressive movement in the 
state. Few men would voluntarily abandon the 
patronage of a state in the midst of a conflict, with 
an untried primary law holding the fate of the 
future, and with the entire federal patronage of 
the post-offices, internal revenue, and departments 
of justice in the hands of their enemies. 

But the merit system proved a bulwark of strength 
to the progressive cause. It kept men in office 
trained to thorough methods and imbued with a sense 
of affection for the state and the principles for which 
they had been fighting. It has been honestly en- 
forced and has opened up the public service to a new 
type of men and women who have eagerly availed 
themselves of the opportunity to enter the public 
employ. Many of them had been identified with the 
progressive cause, and many were trained in the uni- 
versity under the group of men in the economic and 
political science departments, which have always been 
a source of radical university opinion. 



30 WISCONSIN 

La Follette had brought the university into close 
touch with the capital. He identified it with politics 
in the proper sense. This was one of his greatest 
achievements. The regents sympathized with his 
policy, as did Charles R. Van Hise, who had been 
La Follette's college friend, and whose election as 
president was largely due to La Follette's efforts. 
During these years the university lured professors 
and students to Madison. It built up a department 
of political and economic science under the direction 
of Dr. Richard T. Ely, the economist, John R. Com- 
mons, the expert on labor and industrial questions, 
E. A. Ross, the sociologist, and Paul S. Reinsch, in 
the department of political science. Frederick J. 
Turner was emphasizing the influence of the West on 
American history, while other men were awakening 
an open-minded student body to new ideas in politics, 
economics, and service. The railway, taxation, and 
primary laws had been drafted with the co-operation 
of university professors, while most of the officials 
elected with La Follette were still in the state-house. 
They, too, are for the most part university men, as 
are an increasing number of members of the legis- 
lature. The close intimacy of the university with 
public affairs explains the democracy, the thorough- 
ness, and the scientific accuracy of the state in its 
legislation. It, as much as any other influence, kept 
Wisconsin true to the progressive movement during 
these years. 



LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS 31 

The university had aroused the resentment of 
the privileged interests, and vacancies on the board 
of regents had been filled by reactionary nominees 
closely identified with water-power interests and pub- 
lic utility corporations. They resented the work of 
the university, its teaching, its democratic tendencies. 
Especially did they resent the activity of President 
Van Hise, who is a geologist of international renown, 
in conservation and the protection of the water- 
powers of the state. They protested against the 
freedom of academic discussion which prevailed. A 
feeling of suppression prevailed in university circles. 
There was grave danger to academic freedom. Fred- 
erick J. Turner resigned from the chair of American 
history, while investigations were made of the class- 
room utterances of some of the professors. Students 
as well as instructors became restive, and the class 
of 1910 uttered a protest against the interference of 
the regents with freedom of teaching at the univer- 
sity. It chose, as a class monument, a bronze tablet, 
on which was inscribed a declaration of academic 
freedom taken from the report made by the board 
of regents in 1894, following an investigation by the 
regents of the writings of Professor Richard T. Ely. 
The tablet was denied a place on the campus, but 
was hung in a conspicuous place in the trophy room 
of the Students' Union, located on the edge of the 
grounds. The inscription reads as follows: "What- 
ever may be the limitations which trammel enquiry 



32 WISCONSIN 

elsewhere, we believe that the great State University 
of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual 
and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone 
the truth can be found." 

During these years the university was widening 
its influence through the extension department. It 
organized lecture courses and debating clubs, and 
distributed books and pamphlets on economic and 
social questions, which fairly presented both sides 
of the question. The agricultural department was 
reaching out to the farmers, who, in increasing num- 
bers, were coming themselves or were sending their 
sons to the university. By these means the whole 
state was being trained to a belief in the reforms al- 
ready achieved and awakened to a desire for their 
extension. Pride took the place of fear, while the 
business interests generally acquiesced in the legis- 
lation they had been taught to distrust. The railway 
commission was cautious, many thought too cau- 
tious, in its action. It ignored the flood of requests 
for immediate relief, insisting it must first know the 
value of the railways and public utility corpora- 
tions, as well as the cost of service, before it could 
act on rates and charges. For it was composed of 
university men and lawyers trained to accurate 
thinking. 

The ad valorem tax laws increased the taxes of the 
railways by $600,000 a year, while the railway com- 
mission by its cautious and scientific treatment of 



LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS 33 

the problems presented to it gained the confidence of 
the state. 

Business conditions in Wisconsin improved more 
rapidly than in the country as a whole. The bank in- 
spection law, enacted in 1904, put a stop to careless 
banking and speculative credits. Not a single bank 
failure has occurred among the 507 state banks in 
Wisconsin since its enactment, the only failures hav- 
ing been in three national banks through embezzle- 
ment. In the seven years ending in 1910, the capital 
and surplus of state and national banks increased 
54 per cent as compared with an increase of 46.6 per 
cent for the country as a whole. During the four 
years following 1905, business failures in Wisconsin 
decreased one-tenth as compared with the previous 
four years, while for the country at large they in- 
creased one-third. Nor was railroad building dis- 
couraged, for in spite of provisions against watered 
securities, the actual investment from 1903 to 1909 
amounted to $39,000,000, or an increase of 15 per 
cent over 1903. 

Even the public utility corporations began to ac- 
quiesce in regulation, while many heartily approved 
of it. It gave stability to their business and im- 
proved their securities. It also freed them from the 
necessity of interfering in local politics as well as 
from discriminating rates and rebates, which are al- 
most as costly to the corporations as to the public 
at large. A free highway, open to all alike, and on 



34 WISCONSIN 

the same terms, encouraged business and made it 
secure. It stimulated industry and attracted capital 
to the state. And during these years so thorough 
was the legislative work, and so careful were the 
commissions created under them, that only one of 
the more important progressive laws have been over- 
turned by the supreme court, and not one was carried 
into the federal courts. 1 

In 1910 privilege made its last stand. The Wis- 
consin idea was extending to other states. Railway, 
public utilities, industrial, the direct primary, and 
other laws were being adopted bodily by other com- 
monwealths as models of constructive legislation. 
Governors and legislators looked to Wisconsin for 
aid in the solution of their problems, and state after 
state was incorporating her laws into its own al- 
most without change. It was necessary to check 
this movement and stem the tide of revolt. La Fol- 
lette's first term in the senate was expiring. He must 
be defeated for re-election. The primaries of 1910 
and the election which followed saw privilege and 
democracy more clearly aligned than at any previous 
time or place in American history. The Progressives 
were successful at the primaries. They nominated 
for governor Francis E. McGovern of Milwaukee, 
long a supporter of La Follette, upon a platform 
drafted by the candidates, which was so definite, 

1 In 1912 the supreme court declared a law providing for state 
control of water-powers to be unconstitutional. 



LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS 35 

concrete, and inclusive as to leave little to be de- 
sired. It was a model platform for a state programme 
which the legislature of 1911 conscientiously enacted 
without equivocation. It declared for a corrupt 
practices act limiting the amount of money to be 
spent at primaries or elections, as well as for an 
amendment to the primary law, which would insure 
majority nominations by giving the voter the right 
to name a second choice. A declaration for the initi- 
ative, referendum and recall, and home rule for cities 
extended democracy a step farther, while a state in- 
come tax was endorsed to equalize taxation. The 
platform protested against the surrender of water- 
powers and assured their conservation and control by 
the railway commission. It declared for a compre- 
hensive industrial programme including a workman's 
insurance bill, effective child and woman hours of 
labor measures, state aid to highways, and freedom 
at the state university. Academic freedom was made 
a political issue before the people for the first time in 
this country by the following declaration : 

We are proud of the high eminence attained by 
our state university. We attribute its advancement 
both to the able and courageous guidance of its 
president and faculty and to the progressive and 
enlightened character of the citizenship that sus- 
tains it. We commend its research work, illustrated 
by what has been accomplished in agricultural and 
dairy affairs, conserving our natural resources, which 
have effected a saving of millions of dollars annually 



36 WISCONSIN 

to the people of our state. We also commend its in- 
vestigations for the improvement of the relations of 
men to one another. We regard the university as 
the people's servant, carrying knowledge and assist- 
ance to the homes and farms and workshops, and 
inspiring the youth toward individual achievement 
and good citizenship. We recognize that its service 
to the state, through investigations in agriculture, 
industry, and social institutions, depends upon its 
freedom to find the truth and make it known, and 
we pledge the Republican party to the policy of aca- 
demic freedom so well expressed by the board of re- 
gents in 1894, when they declared: " Whatever may 
be the limitations which trammel enquiry elsewhere, 
we believe that the great State University of Wis- 
consin should ever encourage that continual and 
fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the 
truth can be found. " 

The return of La Follette to the senate was tested 
under the senatorial primary. A convention, which 
had the approval of the national administration, was 
called by the Stalwarts to oppose him. La Fol- 
lette, confined at home by illness, was unable to 
take any part in the campaign, but Progressives came 
to his aid from all over the country. He received 
143,000 votes at the primary to his opponent's 
40,000. Six thousand dollars was spent on his be- 
half, while the interests opposed to his election ex- 
pended $114,000. At the same time a Progressive 
Republican state ticket was elected, pledged to the 
most constructive programme of popular govern- 
ment and industrial legislation ever presented to any 



LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS 37 

state. The direct primary had vitalized the party 
platform and converted into an obligation what is 
usually a declaration of obscure generalities. The 
state was ready to take up its second instalment of 
commonwealth building. 



CHAPTER III 
CALLING IN THE EXPERT 

Geemany has identified science with politics more 
closely than has any other nation. The state uni- 
versities, technical and commercial colleges are con- 
sciously used for the advancement of the fatherland. 
Men make a profession of administration. For this 
they prepare themselves. The higher civil service is 
recruited from the universities, as is that of the cities, 
whose burgomasters and members of the magistrat 
are almost all trained men. The colleges of civil 
and international law, of finance and administration, 
of medicine and engineering, are all co-ordinated with 
the state, as are professors and men of science who 
occupy administrative posts, or are assigned to special 
government work. The achievements of Germany 
during the past forty years in industry, commerce, 
and transportation, in her army, navy, and merchant 
marine, in the perfection of her cities are largely the 
result of the close identification of science with poli- 
tics. In no other country is the expert the alter ego 
of the statesman and the administrator as he is in 
that country. The public service attracts the most 
distinguished talent of Germany. 

38 



CALLING IN THE EXPERT 39 

Special schools and new departments are opened 
to meet new needs. There is a town-planning school 
in Berlin to further the art of city planning, to train 
men in the physical side of city administration, in 
engineering, in housing, in health, sanitation, and 
municipal art and beauty. In 1910, the city of 
Diisseldorf opened a school of municipal administra- 
tion and city planning. The course covers two semes- 
ters of three months each, at the end of which stu- 
dents take an examination in the subjects studied, 
which include municipal law, the labor question, 
sanitation, the relief of the poor, and general ad- 
ministration. The teachers are experienced men 
from the courts, the university, and from actual city 
administration. Berlin, Cologne, Frankfort, and 
Dresden, nearly all the large cities in fact, maintain 
splendid commercial colleges for training business 
men in banking, in commercial law, languages, ac- 
counting, and business efficiency. There is scarcely 
a field of statesmanship, administration, or business 
in which provision is not made for the training of 
men who plan to make of it a profession. 

Wisconsin is making the German idea her own. 
The university is the fourth department of the state, 
along with the judicial, executive, and legislative 
branches. There is no provision for this in the con- 
stitution, no reference to it in the laws. But whether 
you sit in the office of the governor or of President 
Van Hise, you see evidences of the most intimate 



40 WISCONSIN 

relationship between the two. The university is the 
nerve centre of the commonwealth, impelling it to 
action in almost every field of activity. It has been 
the direct inspiration of many of the progressive 
laws of the past decade. It has adjusted its teach- 
ings to state problems. It loans its equipment and 
encourages its professors to enter the state service. 
There is some complaint about this; one hears the 
suggestion about the state-house that the legislature 
merely carries out a programme prepared for it on 
University Hill, at the other end of Madison. 

The close union of the university with politics pre- 
vented any serious reaction during the years which 
followed the election of La Follette to the senate. 
University graduates occupied many of the important 
state offices, whether elective or appointive. In 1910 
there were thirty-five professors and instructors giv- 
ing part of their time to the public service. Presi- 
dent Van Hise and Dean E. A. Birge are members of 
the conservation commission, state park board, the 
forestry and fish commissions. John R. Commons, 
professor of political economy, and now a member of 
the newly created industrial commission, has pro- 
moted much of the industrial, labor, and railway 
legislation of recent years. Thomas S. Adams, for- 
mer professor of political economy, is now a member 
of the tax commission, while Dr. B. M. Rastall is 
director of the state board of public affairs. Dr. B. 
H. Meyer, now of the Interstate Commerce Com- 



CALLING IN THE EXPERT 41 

mission at Washington, was a member of the railway 
commission and at the same time professor of trans- 
portation. Charles McCarthy, head of the legisla- 
tive reference library, is lecturer in political science, 
and E. M. Griffith, the state forester, is instructor in 
forestry. C. F. Burgess, professor of mechanical en- 
gineering, is on the engineering staff of the railroad 
and tax commissions, while Richard Fischer, pro- 
fessor of chemistry, is the state chemist. Chauncey 
Juday, state biologist, is lecturer on zoology. J. G. 
D. Mack, W. D. Pence, C. G. Burritt, N. P. Curtis, 
Otto L. Kowalke, H. J. Thorkelson, and J. H. Voss- 
kuehler are all members of the engineering faculty 
and connected with the railway and tax commissions 
in the appraisal of property, the investigation of 
equipment, meters, and conditions of service of the 
local public utility corporations, and the working out 
of technical problems connected with the regulation 
of these industries. Professors in agriculture, in 
chemistry, in law, and in medicine are identified with 
other state activities and give a considerable part 
of their time to public affairs. Groups of students 
spend their vacations in all kinds of state work and 
are the most efficient of employees. 

Wisconsin has bred a spirit of service that is 
unique. There is nothing like it in America. It 
suggests the existence of an instinct for public work 
that we have rarely offered an opportunity to de- 
velop. Men talk about public affairs in Madison; 



42 WISCONSIN 

they talk city, state, and nation, the problems of 
the farmer and the worker, as in no other place I 
have ever been. 

The university is the state research laboratory. 
Graduate students investigate pending questions, 
while the seminars in economics, politics, and soci- 
ology are utilized for the exhaustive study of state 
problems. There is scarcely a big legislative meas- 
ure that was not first thoroughly studied at the uni- 
versity end of Madison before it was placed on the 
statute books at the other. Wisconsin adopted a 
state income tax in 1911. For years the subject was 
studied by advanced students of finance. It was a 
novel idea. Only two or three states had tried the 
income tax and in each of them it had been a failure. 
The students sought for the cause; they studied the 
federal income tax laws, those of Germany, France, 
and England, as well as the methods of assessment 
and collection, and the proper deductions to be made. 
All these questions were thoroughly worked out by 
professors and graduate students before the meas- 
ure was introduced into the assembly. 1 The initia- 
tive, referendum, and recall were studied in the same 
way by the department of politics before resolutions 
amending the state constitution were approved by 
the legislature. The wisdom of the experiment was 
debated, the Swiss and Oregon systems were com- 

1 The income tax bill was finally drafted by Professor T. S. Adams, 
and D. O. Kinsman, a professor in one of the state normal schools, 
who was brought to Madison for the purpose. 



CALLING IN THE EXPERT 43 

pared, their details and achievements were analyzed. 
These measures were discussed all over the state in 
debating clubs and other societies. Wisconsin was 
familiar with these new instruments of democracy 
before they were seriously considered in the state- 
house. The commission form of government, home 
rule'for cities, amendments to the direct primary and 
election laws were studied in the same way. John R. 
Commons used his department for the study of in- 
dustrial insurance, child and woman labor, labor 
exchanges, and factory inspection preparatory to the 
legislation of 1911. German, French, and English 
documents were digested and exact information col- 
lected for use by the special legislative committee 
appointed on the subject of workmen's compensa- 
tion. Mechanical, medicinal, and health problems, 
the reform of the judiciary and criminal procedure, 
the care of indigent and criminal classes, the conser- 
vation of water-power and forests, all these had been 
subjects of scientific investigation long before they 
were imminent as legislation. And when these meas- 
ures were finally presented, they had nearly a united 
state behind them. 

One of the seminars in political science meets in 
the state-house, where its members are assigned con- 
crete questions which trouble members of the assem- 
bly. Recently six fellowships were created. Not for 
foreign travel, but for half-time work in the insurance 
department, the railroad, and tax commissions. 



44 WISCONSIN 

Through these fellowships, men secure an .actual 
knowledge of the subjects they are studying. Presi- 
dent Charles R. Van Hise awakened the state to an 
interest in conservation and the preservation of 
water-powers. His activity aroused the hostility of 
the electric power interests, which were represented 
on the board of regents. They resented his activity, 
as well as the freedom of discussion in the university. 
This interference with academic freedom ceased in 
1911 with a change in the personnel of the board. 

Departments far remote from twentieth-century 
problems are affected by the modern note. I listened 
to the professor of Roman history discussing the con- 
ditions of the Roman republic in the years preceding 
the empire. He departed widely from the historical 
teaching with which I was familiar. The story of 
the decay of Rome became a twentieth-century warn- 
ing in the close analogy drawn between landlordism 
in the first great republic and our own. He explained 
how the colossal plantations, the latifundia of the 
old Roman land-grabbers, had been obtained just as 
were the land and timber grants in the American 
West; he showed how in each instance they were 
born of a close alliance of politics with business, by 
the class control of the Roman senate and the Amer- 
ican congress, whose members in each instance, and in 
exactly the same way, betrayed their trust for the 
enrichment of themselves and their associates. The 
professor of English history had been spending his 



CALLING IN THE EXPERT 45 

vacation in England, not in the British Museum or 
the Bodleian Library, but out on the hustings stump- 
ing with politicians in the budget campaign of 1909, 
in order that he might interpret the past from a 
knowledge of the present. 

Historians and sociologists interpret their sciences 
in the light of the needs of present-day Wisconsin. 
E. A. Ross, the author of "Sin and Society/' teaches 
sociology in terms of the tenement and the farm, 
rather than in terms of the cave man. He sends 
students out into the state to learn what the farmer 
reads, what are his recreations and those of his chil- 
dren, in order that the state may know his needs. 
He analyzes the crimes of men, of society, of business, 
the failures of criminal procedure and its punish- 
ments, in order that facts may be translated into 
remedies at the capitol. Sociology in Wisconsin is a 
science of life, of to-day, of human efficiency. 

The utilitarian activities of the university have 
not interfered with academic standards or high ideals 
of research and scholarship. For the university en- 
courages research, it maintains high standards of 
scholarship, and its faculty is filled with men of 
eminence in their respective fields. While compari- 
sons are difficult, I should say that the achievements 
and standards of the university are equal to those 
of the privately endowed universities of the East, 
and that the publicity given to the agricultural and 
extension departments has led to more critical stand- 



46 WISCONSIN 

ards than would otherwise obtain. The university 
has made notable contributions to science, while its 
professors are constantly being called to other insti- 
tutions. The close contact of the university with the 
state has vitalized its life. It has done much for the 
professors; it has done more for the students. There 
is an atmosphere of enthusiasm, of interest in the 
things that are, that is different from anything I know 
in any other institution of learning in America. 

A large number of the graduates from the schools 
of economics and politics enter the public service in 
Wisconsin, at Washington, and in other states and 
cities. Requests come to Madison from all over the 
country for men to fill positions in civil and social 
work. And apparently graduates prefer public to 
private work, administrative posts rather than aca- 
demic ones. Wisconsin has created a new profession, 
the profession of public service. It has adapted the 
German idea to American soil. 

One of the by-products of the university is the 
legislative reference library organized by Charles 
McCarthy of the department of politics. McCarthy 
observed members of the legislature, untrained to 
study and bill drafting, drifting about the library 
seeking information and aid; he saw the mass of 
conflicting and undigested legislation which went 
through the mill, and came to the conclusion that 
legislation has failed, in part at least, because of the 
absence of any permanent agency for gathering ma- 



CALLING IN THE EXPERT 47 

terial and the drafting of measures. Most of our 
state legislatures meet biennially. The session lasts 
for only a few months. Its members are untrained 
to law-making and unused to legislative methods. 
To meet this defect and bring together the various 
departments of the state, McCarthy evolved a bureau 
to aid the legislature and translate the work of the 
expert into law. He became its director. The li- 
brary occupies quarters in the state-house, where the 
laws of other states, public reports, monographs, and 
treatises on current industrial, social, and legal prob- 
lems are collected. Expert draftsmen are connected 
with the bureau, as well as a corps of men and women 
from the university. Members of the legislature come 
to McCarthy to draft their bills. They bring their 
local problems or some big constructive proposal. 
The evil to be corrected is studied, laws of other 
states are analyzed, and experts from the departments 
co-operate to make the measure as perfect as possible. 
The aim is not only exact draftsmanship, but intelli- 
gent law-making. McCarthy and his associates work 
with committees; they aid members in gathering 
material for speeches, and serve as ex officio clerks 
in the assembly. The bureau occupies a position 
not dissimilar from the permanent staff of experts in 
the departments at Washington. It has become a 
clearing-house of service, not only for Wisconsin, but 
for the country as well. Into this bureau the political 
progress of the world is gathered; out of it comes a 



48 WISCONSIN 

new chemical compound in the form of progressive 
legislation. From this laboratory men and women 
are graduating into similar reference bureaus in cities 
and states all over the country. 

One of the first acts of the socialist administra- 
tion in Milwaukee, following its election in 1910, was 
to organize a Bureau of Economy and Efficiency. 
It sent to the state university and secured John R. 
Commons to become the city's expert, a kind of un- 
official burgomaster, to furnish expert information 
and advice on municipal problems. Commons 
took with him a number of university men who 
proceeded to reorganize the departments, to install 
the best systems of accounting, to make surveys of 
the needs of the city. The purpose was to check 
waste, to bring about economy. The object of the 
bureau is to get the best possible use out of materials, 
time, and labor, and to organize the city as an effi- 
cient political, social, and business organization. 
The bureau first installed a system to show how much 
each unit of work costs and ought to cost. Com- 
parisons are made with other cities and reports are 
made to officials and the community. The collection 
of refuse and garbage was reorganized, which resulted 
in a substantial saving in this department. En- 
gineers showed how the refuse plant could be re- 
built and effect a saving of nearly $40,000 a year. 
Other experts devised the most efficient method 
of installing fire and police alarm systems. Street 



CALLING IN THE EXPERT 49 

flushers were subjected to competitive tests under a 
standard of efficiency. Departments were reorgan- 
ized to prevent confusion and overlapping of func- 
tions. Needless employees were eliminated. Charts 
were drawn to show the powers and duties of various 
officials. A municipal reference library was organized 
to which an expert was called from the university. 
It is a clearing-house of other cities. Bulletins are 
published and surveys made of city work. The rates 
of the water department were revised, boiler effi- 
ciency was studied, as was street and sewer construc- 
tion and cleaning. There were surveys of public 
recreation and amusements, of special assessments as 
a means of paying for permanent improvements. 
The health of the city was studied, as was the milk 
supply, infant mortality, meats and foods, municipal 
recreations, and free employment agencies. Ex- 
perts from other cities, the majority of whom were 
connected with the state university, were identified 
with the bureau. They consult on special subjects 
and criticise the work of the permanent staff. The 
bureau is an indirect method of adjusting the Ger- 
man municipal expert, who forms the central figure 
in German municipal administration to the American 
city. It offers permanency and expert advice from 
any source without interfering with the existing mu- 
nicipal machinery. It is another example, not only 
of the influence which the university exerts on Wis- 
consin, but of the flexibility of American political 



50 WISCONSIN 

institutions in adapting to our uses the methods of 
other lands. 

I know of no place in America where officials work 
with more devotion than they do in Wisconsin. 
There is an enthusiasm in the public service that is 
unique. It is not confined to men from the univer- 
sity, it seems to animate almost all officials. Politics 
is a profession to which men give the best that is in 
them. Members of the appointive commissions, 
which occupy such a prominent place in the admin- 
istration of the state, many members of the legisla- 
ture as well as officials in the subordinate posts, are 
animated by a love of public service that is very dif- 
ferent from the motives which lead men.to seek public 
place in other states. 



CHAPTER IV 
COMPLETING THE STRUCTURE OF DEMOCRACY 

We adopted the secret ballot from Australia, and 
the initiative and referendum from Switzerland, but 
the mandatory direct state-wide primary is Wiscon- 
sin's contribution to democracy. It abolished every 
intermediary between voter and official, between 
principal and agent. It assumed that the intelli- 
gence used at elections could be trusted in the pri- 
maries. That is all the primary is, and it is surprising 
there ever could have been any intelligent opposi- 
tion to its adoption. It is fundamental to popular 
government, for it controls the sources of govern- 
ment. Whoever controls the primaries controls 
everything else. 

The results which have followed the adoption of 
the popular primary show that the trouble in Amer- 
ica is not with our people, as we have assumed, but 
with the tools with which we are compelled to work. 
Only the boss can gather all the strings of the con- 
vention system in his hands, and with money, place, 
and personal influence direct the complex machinery 
to his ends. The boss has become a tradition in Wis- 
consin, as he is rapidly becoming in other states of 

51 



52 WISCONSIN 

the Union which have adopted some form of pri- 
mary nominations. 

The Wisconsin primary was thorough. It con- 
tained no jokers. It abolished the convention, root 
and branch. It did away with all delegates. Now 
every candidate, from constable to governor and 
United States senator, appeals to the people directly. 
There is no one else to be seen; no secret pledges to 
be made. A man becomes a candidate by filing nom- 
ination papers signed by one per cent of the voters 
of the party for a state office, two per cent of the 
voters of a district for congressional office, and three 
per cent for the senate, assembly, and county offices. 
The petition is then filed in the proper offices and 
the names of the candidates, rotated so as to give 
no preference, go on the ballot. Primaries are held 
by the state rather than the parties, on the first Tues- 
day in September. The costs of the primaries, which 
are conducted the same as elections, are paid from 
the public treasury. Candidates for state offices 
meet shortly after the primary and formulate a plat- 
form and choose a campaign committee. There is 
no possibility of evasion, for they themselves must 
see to the execution of the party's pledges. And 
platforms in Wisconsin are now taken seriously. 
They are executed without equivocation. Nor is 
there any irresponsible campaign committee to bar- 
ter legislation for money, privilege, or place. The 
direct primary cleans away all obstacles to direct 



COMPLETING THE STRUCTURE 53 

action. It establishes simplicity, directness, respon- 
sibility. 

In 1906 the primary law was extended to candi- 
dates for the United States senate, whose names go 
on the primary ballot the same as candidates for 
other offices. The voters of each party select their 
candidate for the senate. This vote is not legally 
binding on the assembly, but in every state where 
popular nominations have been made, the dominant 
party in the legislature has obeyed the mandate of 
the primaries. The Wisconsin law does not go as far 
as the Oregon plan, under which the people first nom- 
inate candidates for the senate and then vote upon 
the party nominees at the November elections, the 
same as for any other office. They make this vote 
binding by pledging candidates to the assembly to 
register the people's will, irrespective of their party 
affiliations or personal choice. Oregon indirectly 
amended the United States Constitution by this sim- 
ple device. The state sent to the United States sen- 
ate George E. Chamberlain, a Democrat, who was 
chosen by a Republican legislature following the pop- 
ular mandate, in the face of protests from the ad- 
ministration at Washington and the party leaders in 
the state. 

Defects were almost immediately disclosed in the 
Wisconsin law. One was the ability of special interests 
to concentrate support on a single candidate, while 
progressive candidates split the vote of their faction. 



54 WISCONSIN 

This was obviated by an amendment adopted in 1911, 
which provided for majority nominations by means 
of a second choice. Under this amendment each 
elector is entitled to designate the name of his first 
choice and also the name of his second choice as nom- 
inee for each office. This is done in two parallel col- 
umns with first and second choice designations. If 
any candidate receives a majority of the first choice 
votes, he is nominated. If no candidate receives a 
clear majority, then the name of that candidate 
having the least number of first choice votes is 
dropped, and the second choice votes cast by his 
supporters are added to the first choice votes of 
other candidates for whom they are cast. This 
operation is repeated until some candidate has a 
majority. This results in securing majority nomi- 
nations and an expression of the matured judgment 
of the party. 

Direct primaries, too, are expensive. They give 
an advantage to the rich candidate, who is able to 
employ workers, distribute literature, and bribe 
voters. Money is also powerful in elections. A 
corrupt practices act was adopted in 1911 to check 
these evils. By its provisions the amount that may 
be expended and the purpose for which it may be 
used are fixed by law. Money can only be spent for 
personal hotel and travelling expenses, for postage, 
telegraph, and telephone charges, for payments to the 
state, to the campaign committee, for stationery, 



COMPLETING THE STRUCTURE 55 

rentals, clerical assistance, and idvertising. The 
amount is also limited. The maximum is as follows: 
by candidates for United States senate, $7,500; by 
candidates for representative in congress, $2,500; 
for governor and the supreme court, $5,000; for 
other state offices, $2,000; for state senate, $400; 
for the assembly, $150, and by candidates for county, 
city, or local offices, to a sum not exceeding one-third 
of the first year's salary of such office. Candidates 
may designate their committees or representatives, 
who, along with the candidate, must file itemized 
statements of disbursements. No candidate's name 
may be printed on the ballot unless a statement has 
been so filed. Political newspaper advertisements 
must be marked in capital letters "paid advertise- 
ment. " No candidate may promise appointments or 
employment to promote his election. Nor may em- 
ployers print or make threats or suggestions to the 
effect that in case any particular person or party is 
elected that work in their establishment will cease or 
that places of employment will be closed. Publicity 
is made easy for candidates by a provision for a pub- 
lic pamphlet in which candidates may print their biog- 
raphies, an account of their public services and plat- 
form, which shall be printed by the secretary of state 
and mailed to each voter in the district. The pen- 
alties for violating the corrupt practices law are very 
severe. Any candidate convicted under its provisions 
is ousted from the office to which he has been elected, 



56 WISCONSIN 

which ouster is in addition to any criminal proceed- 
ings that may be brought against him. 

At the same session of the legislature Wisconsin 
divorced national, state, and local elections by pro- 
viding for separate ballots for each. It did not fol- 
low the Massachusetts ballot, on which candidates 
for each office are arranged under that office, but it 
divorced issues by providing for separate ballots for 
national, state, and city tickets. By this means vot- 
ers can easily support a Republican national ticket, 
a Democratic state ticket, and a Socialist city ticket. 
This law was aimed at the indiscriminate sacrifice of 
all other questions and policies to the overshadowing 
issue in the campaign. 

There remained but one step in the programme of 
popular government, and that was the extension of 
the popular choice to the nomination of candidates 
for president and vice-president. Primaries for this 
purpose could not be made mandatory; there would 
still be delegates and conventions. But Oregon had 
evolved a device through the initiative for what has 
come to be known as the presidential preference law. 
Under it, in years when a president is elected, the 
party primaries are to be held in the spring. At these 
primaries the names of candidates for president and 
vice-president are placed on the ballot, the same 
as those for any other office. Voters express their 
choice for presidential candidates, and at the same 
time choose directly delegates to the national con- 



COMPLETING THE STRUCTURE 57 

ventions. Delegates so elected are paid their travel- 
ling expenses up to $200 by the state, and take an 
oath to carry out the expressed will of the party, 
in so far as possible, at the convention. Here again 
the obligation is only a moral one, but it is as bind- 
ing as that which holds a presidential elector true to 
the vote of his state. The delegate cannot barter 
or trade for personal profit; he cannot be used as a 
pawn against the will of his constituents. He be- 
comes a registering agent until his cause is hopeless, 
and then uses his best judgment in supporting a 
second choice. 

Wisconsin added a provision for this purpose to 
its primary law in 1911. It did not follow the Oregon 
plan, but merely made provision for the direct elec- 
tion of delegates at an election held in April, and pro- 
vided that candidates for president and vice-presi- 
dent could have their names placed on the primary 
ballot and be voted for by the people directly. The 
vote when tabulated is a direction to the delegates to 
the convention. This measure, first adopted in Ore- 
gon in 1910, has spread to New Jersey, Nebraska, 
North Dakota, California, and Wisconsin. It will 
be used by these states in the presidential nomi- 
nations of 1912. 

Undoubtedly this law will be so generally adopted 
within the next few years that hereafter candidates 
for president and vice-president will be nominated 
by the people directly the same as candidates for 



58 WISCONSIN 

minor political offices. As it is now, the people have 
little voice in the choice of presidential candidates. 
The party out of power is open to control by business 
interests. They alone can manufacture public senti- 
ment, finance a movement, and promote a candidacy. 
They almost always control the national committees 
of both parties, which designate the time and place 
of conventions in the interest of the candidacy of 
some person in whom they are interested. On the 
other hand, the nominations of the party in power are 
easily controlled by the President through patronage. 
Federal appointees are active in local politics. They 
pick the delegates to the national convention. When 
the Republican party is in power, the southern 
states and territories, which have among them 338 
votes in the convention, are subject to the Presi- 
dent's will. They elect one-third of the delegates. 
Through them the President can almost always 
name himself or dictate his successor. He has only 
to secure 153 additional votes from the northern 
states, while any other candidate has to secure 
491. 1 

The general adoption of a presidential primary will 
put an end to the control of the highest office in the 
land by federal office-holders and wealth; it will 
convert the convention into a registering body, and 
will lead to the nomination of known candidates 

1 The number of delegates has been increased by the reapportion- 
ment of delegates based on the census enumeration of 1910, but the 
distribution is not materially changed. 



COMPLETING THE STRUCTURE 59 

rather than dark horses. No President will then be 
able to dictate his successor, and privilege will find 
difficulty in controlling 20,000,000 voters. 

The direct primary, second choice, senatorial pri- 
mary, corrupt practices act, and presidential pref- 
erence laws form the machinery of popular represent- 
ative government. They insure responsibility and 
responsiveness. They abolish all intermediaries be- 
tween principal and agent. Candidates make pledges 
only to the people who elect them. Through them 
the power of the boss, of the machine, and of wealth 
are reduced to a minimum. 

The last session of the legislature (1911) carried 
democracy still further. Resolutions were adopted 
providing for amendments to the constitution by 
which the people can legislate directly through the 
initiative and referendum, as well as recall any offi- 
cials except judges whom they have come to distrust. 
A resolution was also adopted extending the suffrage 
to women. These amendments will be submitted to 
the people for approval. 

The initiative and referendum does not abolish 
representative government; it supplements it. It 
creates a new means of legislation. By means of the 
initiative, a certain percentage of the voters can pro- 
pose a measure and vote upon it directly. It permits 
the people to amend the constitution in the same way. 
Under the referendum, if the legislature passes some 
law of which the people disapprove, they can tern- 



60 WISCONSIN 

porarily suspend it by petition, and finally veto it 
by vote of the people. 

These devices for direct legislation, first perfected 
by Oregon in 1902, have swept over the country in 
ten years' time. They have been adopted in more 
or less perfect form in the states of Oregon, Calif ornia, 
Nevada, Utah, Montana, Colorado, South Dakota, 
Arkansas, Oklahoma, Arizona, Missouri, and Maine. 
Similar amendments are pending to be voted on by 
the people in Washington, Wyoming, Nebraska, 
North Dakota, and Florida. The system adopted in 
Oregon is more perfect than that of most of the other 
states and it has been more frequently used. It is 
easily set in motion. A publicity pamphlet is dis- 
tributed to all the voters to familiarize them with 
measures submitted for their consideration. But 
eight per cent of the voters are required to initiate a 
measure and five per cent to suspend an act of the 
legislature pending a referendum. In the last ten 
years Oregon has voted on sixty-four measures, of 
which one-half have been adopted. Through it the 
people initiated one of the best primary laws in the 
country. They extended it to United States senators. 
Then they added the recall on all elective officials, 
including judges. They gave cities and counties pure 
home rule in local affairs. They gave them power 
to control taxation and the liquor traffic. They sim- 
plified judicial procedure and adopted a workmen's 
compensation act. They adopted a presidential pref- 



COMPLETING THE STRUCTURE 61 

erence law. All of these measures were carefully 
drawn, and are being used as models by other states. 
Through this instrument Oregon secured a score of 
measures, which other states have vainly struggled 
to obtain for years. 

Wisconsin declined to follow blindly the Oregon 
system of direct legislation generally copied by other 
states. Her representative system had been greatly 
improved. The legislative reference bureau, to- 
gether with the experts from the university, had given 
the people confidence in the assembly. It was de- 
sired to retain these advantages of expert bill draft- 
ing. So the legislature amended the Oregon plan by 
providing that the initiative should not be used di- 
rectly, but that bills and constitutional amendments 
should first be introduced into the legislature. There 
they take the regular course. They may be amended 
in committee or on the floor. But any bill so intro- 
duced, with or without any amendments which have 
been added, which is not adopted by the legislature, 
may be submitted to the people if a petition is filed 
with the secretary of state, not less than four months 
before the next general election, requesting that this 
be done and containing the names of eight per cent 
of the electors. Not more than one-half of such re- 
quired petitioners may be from any one county. A 
constitutional amendment is initiated by the same 
process if petitioned by ten per cent of the electors. 
Then if a majority of those voting upon the measure 



62 WISCONSIN 

approve of it, it becomes a law without further for- 
mality. By this procedure the state retains the bene- 
fit of its experts, but reserves the right to the people 
to go behind their representatives, if they refuse to 
act. 

A resolution for a constitutional amendment was 
also passed, providing for the recall. It was extended 
to all elective officials with the exception of the ju- 
diciary. The amendment directs the legislature to 
provide by law for carrying its provisions into effect. 
A resolution extending the suffrage to women was 
also adopted, which is to be voted on in November, 
1912. The amendments for the initiative, referen- 
dum, and recall must again be approved by the leg- 
islature before they can be submitted to the state 
for adoption by the people. 

With these amendments adopted, Wisconsin will 
have extended democracy to its limits so far as state 
affairs are concerned. It remained to extend the 
same freedom to the municipalities, which, as in most 
of our states, were the wards of the state. Their 
charters, powers, and details of administration were 
subject to constant interference by the legislature. 
There was little local autonomy or home rule. This 
guardianship of the state is one of the main causes of 
our city failures. It has destroyed a city sense; it 
has impaired local initiative. Our cities find it diffi- 
cult to promote any project because of state laws 
which can only be altered after an exhausting strug- 



COMPLETING THE STRUCTURE 63 

gle in the legislature, frequently followed by pro- 
longed litigation in the courts. The rate of municipal 
taxation is limited. So is the bonded indebtedness. 
Cities may not own gas, electric light, or street rail- 
way undertakings. They have little control over 
their water fronts, over taxation, over the land with- 
in their limits. They cannot control tenements, the 
height, style, or character of buildings. When power 
is extended to them it is frequently valueless because 
of some other limitation which has not been repealed. 
Attempts to control the public service corporations 
are met by injunctions prolonged in the courts until 
the administration which promoted the reform is out 
of office. Police, fire, health, school, street cleaning, 
andotherdepartments labor under similar limitations. 
Even the wages paid are frequently fixed by state 
law. Municipal officials in this country are, for the 
most part, routine agents of the state. They have 
little power for constructive city building. In our 
fear of too much freedom we have left little chance 
for efficiency. 

The American city waits on freedom, on home rule, 
on such home rule as the state itself enjoys. The 
German city has such freedom. It can do almost any- 
thing an individual can do. It has such powers as are 
not specifically denied to it. With this freedom, 
Germany has produced the greatest cities in the 
modern world, great in ideals, in experiments, in 
achievement. 



64 WISCONSIN 

The cities of Wisconsin labored under limitations 
such as these until the legislative session of 1911. 
Cities were divided into classes, with over seventeen 
third-class cities and one hundred fourth-class ones. 
Laws made for one class did not apply to others. The 
needs of one community had to be imposed on all 
communities within the class. The legislature was 
burdened with questions of local concern which en- 
couraged " log-rolling" and trading in legislation. 
Finally, in 1911, the legislature swept away many of 
these limitations. It freed the cities from control by 
the legislature. Cities can now alter or amend their 
charters as they see fit. They can adopt a wholly 
new charter, or amend the existing one by their own 
initiative. The council may submit changes in the 
charter which, if approved by a majority of the voters 
at a referendum, become part of the constitution of 
the city. Ten per cent of the electors can propose 
a change, which is then submitted to the people in 
the same way. Or, if it is desired, a constitutional 
convention, consisting of fifteen citizens, can be called 
to draft an entirely new instrument. Such a con- 
vention can be called into being by resolution of the 
council or by petition signed by five per cent of the 
electors. When a new charter has been drafted by 
such a convention, it is then submitted to the peo- 
ple, and if a majority of those voting upon it approve 
of it, it becomes the charter of the municipality as 
though adopted by the legislature itself. 



COMPLETING THE STRUCTURE 65 

Under this plan, cities can retain their existing 
charters; they can adopt the federal plan, such as 
prevails in many eastern cities, or they can try the 
commission plan, which has been adopted with such 
rapidity by over a hundred cities in the last few years. 

Municipal democracy was still further widened by 
the initiative and referendum. Under this law twenty- 
five per cent of the electors of the city can initiate an 
ordinance and call for a special election upon it or, 
if the petitioners are willing to wait until the next 
general election, fifteen per cent of the voters can 
propose a measure. Ordinances enacted by the coun- 
cil are subject to a referendum by the filing of a peti- 
tion signed by twenty per cent of the electors, which 
petition suspends the ordinance until it has been 
passed on by the people. 

The powers of cities in industrial matters were not 
widened as greatly as were their rights to frame their 
own charters. They cannot collect their revenues as 
they wish, or fix the limits of their bonded indebted- 
ness. These latter powers are even more fundamental 
than those which have been granted. Such powers 
have been extended to cities of the Pacific coast, in 
which states experiments are now going forward for 
the utilization of the taxing power, as well as of the 
right of municipal ownership, to work out a pro- 
gramme of city building. But Wisconsin has freed 
her cities politically and given them a wide measure 
of control over their own affairs. With the co-opera- 



66 WISCONSIN 

tion of the experts of the state and the university, 
and with the spread of efficiency which characterizes 
the commonwealth, we may expect the cities to build 
as has the state itself. 



CHAPTER V 

REGULATING THE RAILROADS AND PUBLIC 
UTILITY CORPORATIONS 

Railway and public utility corporation control 
has followed different lines in Wisconsin from those 
followed in other states. The railway commission 
has emphasized the abolition of favors and discrim- 
inations, the improvement of service, the valuation 
of property, and the standardization of devices and 
accounts, rather than the immediate reduction of 
rates and charges. The commission determined first 
to know the facts in order that its decisions should 
be supported by exact knowledge of values and the 
cost of services. 

In this the commission has succeeded. It employs 
a corps of trained men in engineering and account- 
ing; it has studied the details of corporation man- 
agement; it knows what operation and construction 
costs should be, and is able, through its knowledge, 
to adjust many disputes without the formality of a 
hearing. 

The railway commission bill was enacted in 1905. 
It was the concluding piece of legislation in La Fol- 
lette's programme, and is probably the most com- 

67 



68 WISCONSIN 

prehensive measure of its kind yet enacted by any 
state. It has required scarcely any amendment and 
has been widely copied as a model by other common- 
wealths. 

The law was novel in many of its features. It pro- 
vided for the valuation of the physical property of 
railways as a first step in intelligent rate-making. 
Stock and bond issues are ignored. The public util- 
ity law, adopted in 1907, which extended the act to 
all local franchise corporations, provides that "the 
commission shall value all of the property of every 
public utility actually used and useful for the con- 
venience of the public." In carrying out this man- 
date the commission pursues a middle course. It 
does not allow for good- will, for franchises, for monop- 
oly value. It ascertains "as accurately as possible 
the true cost of reproduction of each item of physical 
property included in the inventory." This does not 
mean scrap value. It means valuation as a unit, as 
a going concern, with some allowance for all of the 
elements that should be considered in the value of 
the plant. This is the capitalization upon which re- 
turns are allowed in the fixing of rates and charges. 

The act provides that complaints may be made, 
not only by communities and shippers, but by the 
commission as well. It is a prosecuting as well as a 
quasi judicial body. Much of its efficiency is due to 
this provision. Wide discretion is given the com- 
mission in its actions. This, too, is characteristic of 



RAILROADS AND CORPORATIONS 69 

Wisconsin. It legislates in the expectation of secur- 
ing efficient men to administer its laws, rather than 
in fear of dishonest ones. It avoids legislative detail 
and widens executive powers, appreciating that 
changing conditions make legislative prevision im- 
possible. Railways are left free to make their own 
rates, but always subject to review by the commis- 
sion. Rates established by the railways are "prima 
facie lawful until they are decreed to be unreasonable. 
But if altered, the commission's rates then become 
prima facie just and reasonable. The burden of 
proof is on the complainant in the first instance, on 
the railway in the second. 

Effective control has frequently failed through the 
ability of the corporations to enjoin the orders of the 
commission, and thus delay the relief granted. The 
railroads contended for this power in Wisconsin, but 
the legislature insisted that the rights of the state 
were superior to the rights of the carrier, and that an 
order issued by the commission, with full opportunity 
for a hearing, should stand until reversed on its merits 
by the courts. Orders of the commission can only 
be challenged by direct proceedings for their vaca- 
tion on the ground that the rate or classification is 
unlawful or unreasonable. Provision is made for a 
speedy trial. No ex parte injunctions are permitted 
against the orders of the commission. It must be 
given a hearing before any restraining order can issue. 

Corporations are required to present their entire 



70 WISCONSIN 

case at the hearing before the commission. They are 
not permitted to make a frivolous defence and later 
introduce new testimony before the courts. If new 
evidence is offered at the trial, the whole case, or at 
least the new testimony, is referred back to the com- 
mission, which can then modify its previous order. 
If it amends its decree, the case is tried with the new 
order before the court. This compels the railways 
to act fairly. It prevents delays. 

The law prohibits rebates and discriminations of 
all kinds. It authorizes the commission to standard- 
ize accounts, to examine the books of the companies, 
to require verified lists of all passes issued, with the 
reasons therefor. 

One of the main contests was over the method of 
selecting the commission. The railroads wanted it 
made elective. But the legislature, with an instinct 
for the expert and an appreciation of the difficulty 
of securing the right kind of men by popular elec- 
tion, made the commission appointive by the gov- 
ernor. Generous salaries of $5,000 a year are pro- 
vided, and the length of term is six years. The 
original railway law covers express, telephone, tele- 
graph, and private car companies. In 1907 it was 
widened to include street railways, gas, electric light, 
water, and other local utilities, including those owned 
and operated by the cities. 

Many railway commissions fail, either because the 
railways control the members, or for lack of trained 



RAILROADS AND CORPORATIONS 71 

men familiar by education or experience with the 
problems involved. The appointees of La Follette 
were men of special training and known ability. Dr. 
B. H. Meyer, who had made a special study of trans- 
portation in Germany, was the first chairman. He 
has since been transferred to the Interstate Commerce 
Commission in Washington. Halford Erickson, a 
statistician and former railroad auditor, and Judge 
John Barnes, since elevated to the supreme bench, 
were the other two nominees. Their recognized hon- 
esty, ability, and fairness produced immediate con- 
fidence in the commission. 

Later amendments to the public utility law re- 
pealed all franchises of the local public service cor- 
porations for a definite term of years and substituted 
therefor a license in the form of an "indeterminate 
permit." They gave the corporation a legally pro- 
tected monopoly, free from new competition in its 
field but subject to regulation as to rates and ser- 
vices. It can only be deprived of its property by the 
municipality itself, and then on a valuation fixed by 
the commission. The original utility law of 1907 
gave the corporations the option to exchange their 
term franchises for indeterminate permits. It also 
provided that all future grants should be of this 
character. But only ten per cent of the companies 
took advantage of this privilege, and by a later law 
the legislature, acting under the reserved power under 
the constitution to alter or amend any grant, repealed 



72 WISCONSIN 

all term franchises of all corporations and substituted 
the indeterminate permit therefor. In exchange for 
this loss, the corporations are recognized as monopolies 
and are given protection from the construction of 
competing plants. If this repeal is sustained by the 
courts, a means of relief is offered in other states from 
the long-term franchises made many years ago, fre- 
quently through corrupt alliances, which, under the 
decisions of the courts, have been converted into 
inviolable contracts so far as rates, charges, and 
services are concerned. 

One of the first acts of the commission was to stamp 
out rebates, favors, and discriminations of every 
kind, including those of the local corporations. 
Special examiners appointed in 1903 discovered that 
$1,000,000 a year had been paid by the railroads 
in wrongful rebates during the six years from 1898 to 
1903. Like abuses existed in the telephone, electric 
light, gas, and water companies, which, under the 
pressure of political necessity or the struggle for 
business, were discriminating in their rates. Dr. B. 
H. Meyer says: "The whole state was literally 
streaked and plastered with discrimination in the 
rates of utilities; and in all the rest of the country, 
where the extent of such discriminations has not yet 
been determined as it has been in Wisconsin, it is 
quite probable that discriminations similar in char- 
acter and extent likewise exist." From a study made 
in 1908, it was estimated that fifty-five per cent of the 



RAILROADS AND CORPORATIONS 73 

utility plants were charging discriminatory rates. In 
one city of 4,000 inhabitants, the water company 
served seven big consumers without charge. In La 
Crosse, 113 out of 2,390 users of electric light received 
reductions amounting to a monthly rebate of $1,942. 
In Madison, 1,360 telephone users out of 5,000 re- 
ceived reductions amounting to $1,120 a month. 
Thousands of individuals were receiving free services. 
Charges for electricity covered the widest possible 
range for the same service. The same was true of 
telephones. Dr. Meyer says: "For thirty-two of 
the reporting (telephone) companies, eight out of 
every hundred subscribers received free or reduced- 
rate service." These were typical of the state. It 
has been estimated that the discriminations and 
favors granted by the local utility corporations 
amounted to $2,000,000 a year. 

The commission put an end to these practices, to 
the profit of the corporations, as well as to the ulti- 
mate gain of the community. It terminated all con- 
tracts which did not conform to the public schedules 
of rates. Accurate accounts of the business of every 
utility is kept, through which the commission can 
trace any violation of its orders in rates charged or 
expenditures made. The abolition of rebates has so 
increased earnings that the companies have not seri- 
ously suffered from the reductions in rates which have 
been made. 

During the first five years, the commission reduced 



74 WISCONSIN 

freight rates so that the freight actually carried cost 
the shippers less by $1,200,000 a year than it would 
have cost at the old rates. Like reductions in passen- 
ger rates involved a saving of approximately $800,000 
a year. Despite these reductions, railway net earn- 
ings increased relatively more than the net earnings 
for all the railroads in the United States. The in- 
crease in Wisconsin was 18.45 per cent as against an 
increase of 18.41 per cent for the country as a whole. 
Honestly administered regulation has always proven 
a good thing for the railroads, but a bad thing for 
special interests enjoying discriminatory rates. The 
reduction in charges stimulated business. It in- 
creased passenger traffic. Manufacturing was en- 
couraged by the assurance of a free highway, acces- 
sible to all on equal terms. Agriculture, too, responded 
to the improvement in service. The abolition of free 
passes saved large sums. The prosperity of Wisconsin 
is due in no small part to the improved conditions of 
transportation brought about by the railway com- 
mission. There is a feeling of security on the part of 
shippers. For every one is treated alike. There is no 
difficulty about securing a hearing and disposing of 
a grievance. Complaints are frequently disposed of 
at an informal meeting in which no order is made. 

Thus far the commission has shown more interest 
in improving service than in the reduction of rates 
and charges. It has compelled the railroads to put 
on extra trains, to better the equipment, to build 



RAILROADS AND CORPORATIONS 75 

new stations, to lay switches and sidings, and other- 
wise improve their property. Milwaukee appealed 
to the commission to reduce the street railway fares 
to three cents. The commission made an investiga- 
tion and ordered improvements in the service in- 
stead. Water, telephone, gas, and electric light com- 
panies have been required to spend large sums in 
improving their equipment in order that better ser- 
vice can be given, which in the opinion of the com- 
mission is of more immediate importance than the 
reduction in rates and charges. 

In line with the idea of efficiency and service, the 
commission has standardized devices and accounts. 
This is one of its most valuable achievements. This 
is particularly true of gas, electricity, and telephone 
undertakings. The commission is directed by law 
to prescribe standard commercial units of service, as 
well as standards for the measurement of the quality, 
pressure, or other conditions pertaining to the supply. 
It is directed to insure accuracy of meters and appli- 
ances, and provide for the testing of the same, either 
on application or on its own initiative. To secure 
observance of its standards, inspectors travel through 
the state making secret examinations. They test 
meters, the pressure and quality of gas, the volt- 
age of electricity by means of recording instru- 
ments. 

It was found that few plants were able to comply 
with the standards established. Large sums had to 



76 WISCONSIN 

be spent to bring the equipment up to compliance 
with the rules. The heating value of gas has been 
increased from five to thirty per cent in different 
plants. The pressure has been improved. Consumers 
now receive what they pay for. It was found that 
only about 15 out of 250 electric plants in the state 
were giving reasonably satisfactory voltage. Plants 
had to be overhauled and reconstructed. Two-thirds 
of the consumers have been benefited by these 
changes, the money saving resulting therefrom being 
from $100,000 to $150,000 a year. Much of this in- 
spection and standardizing work has been done by 
the engineering department of the university, which 
is closely identified with the commission. Advanced 
students are employed in the study and valuation of 
plants for rate-making and taxation. 

The commission has become an efficiency bureau 
with a most exhaustive knowledge of the details of 
management. From the reports and data on file, it 
is able to tell whether a plant is being run econom- 
ically or extravagantly. It can direct the introduc- 
tion of economies. There are 1,100 utility plants in 
the state, from which comparisons can be made. 
Most of them are of comparable size and character. 
A complaining corporation is frequently directed to 
increase its efficiency as a means of securing increased 
revenues; it is denied some privilege until it adopts 
improved machinery for securing economy of opera- 
tion. 



RAILROADS AND CORPORATIONS 77 

An immense amount of knowledge has been ac- 
quired through these investigations and valuations. 
The engineering staff includes a corps of civil, mechan- 
ical, and electrical engineers. They value railways 
and the local franchise corporations; they study the 
equipment, meters, and condition of service. They 
know the physical condition and relative efficiency 
of plants, and from their studies become familiar 
with the best mechanical devices for economic and 
efficient operation. 

Out of this information accurate standards of costs 
and efficiency are being formulated. Communities 
in controversy with private plants have all the data 
upon which to formulate their complaints. They 
know the earnings, dividends, and the actual value 
of the property upon which dividends are declared. 
The reports are of great value to managers, who find 
gathered in a single office at Madison and in the lab- 
oratory of the commission a standing exhibit of what 
is being done throughout the state. 

This increased efficiency is proving advantageous 
to the companies. During the year 1910, the electric 
utilities increased their operating revenues 20 per 
cent and their income 29 per cent. New construc- 
tion for the year increased 145 per cent over that of 
the preceding year. Water utilities increased their 
operating revenues 7 per cent, their net income 13 
per cent, and construction account 24 per cent. Gas 
utilities increased their operating revenues 8 per 



78 WISCONSIN 

cent, their net income 15 per cent, and their new 
construction 22 per cent. Telephone utilities in- 
creased their operating revenues 11 per cent, then- 
net income 9 per cent, and new construction 14 per 
cent. 1 

Rate regulation becomes a reasonably accurate 
proceeding with all this material, before the commis- 
sion. It has the reports of all the plants from which 
to make comparison. Waste, high salaries, leakage of 
any kind, are easily checked. The rate reductions 
thus far made have frequently resulted in a substan- 
tial increase in earnings. In 1910 the commission 
reduced the maximum price of electricity in Madison 
from 16 to 14 cents a kilowatt hour. It adjusted 
other rates to a corresponding lower basis. The result 
was that the sale of electricity increased 16 per cent, 
net earnings increased 24 per cent, the company in- 
creased its investment 22 per cent, and the consum- 
ers saved $18,308 a year. In 1911 the company ac- 
cepted another reduction to 12 cents without protest, 
or a total reduction of 25 per cent in two years. The 
lowering in the price so stimulated use as to more than 
compensate the company for the reduction. 

Methods of accounting have also been standard- 
ized and made uniform. It was necessary to secure 
a common denominator for purposes of comparison. 
Many companies failed to make provision for depre- 

1 Address of John H. Roemer, Chairman of Railway Commission, 
on "The Causes and Effects of a Public Utility Commission." 



RAILROADS AND CORPORATIONS 79 

ciation or maintenance. Many issued new securities 
to pay for repairs. Managers are importuned by 
stockholders to neglect needed improvements for the 
sake of dividends. The commission, representing 
the public in this regard, reverses the demand of the 
stockholders and insures better service. It ordered 
corporations to set aside certain sums each year for 
maintenance or the improvement of the plant. It 
has provided standards of depreciation. Expendi- 
tures for maintenance are allowed as part of the pro- 
duction cost in the fixing of rates. In some instances 
it was found that existing rates were too low, so the 
commission ordered an increase in order to permit 
the plant to be maintained in a proper condition of 
efficiency. 

Municipal plants are subject to the same control 
as private ones. Their accounting systems have been 
standardized and abuses have been corrected. Local 
officials were at first unwilling to submit to this super- 
vision. They resented any criticism of their rate 
sheets or their bookkeeping methods. In one of the 
cities there had been a controversy over the water 
plant for twenty years. One portion of the com- 
munity wanted a new filtration system, while another 
believed the supply could be secured from subter- 
ranean waters. The issue was drawn into every elec- 
tion, but at no time did either faction secure a suffi- 
cient majority in the council to carry through its 
programme. Finally an appeal was made to the 



80 WISCONSIN 

commission by a group of citizens praying for an 
order to compel the city to take some steps to im- 
prove the service. The commission caused a number 
of test wells to be sunk to ascertain whether an ade- 
quate supply could be obtained from subterranean 
sources. Such a supply was discovered, and on the 
completion of the investigation the city was ordered 
to take such steps as were necessary to improve the 
service and reconstruct the plant. Upon the receipt 
of the report the council voted the necessary bonds 
and employed an engineer to carry on the work. 

Wisconsin is testing the idea of corporation con- 
trol for the rest of the country. Most persons admit 
that if regulation fails the only other alternative is 
public ownership. And it is probable that regulation 
in Wisconsin has checked the growth of the ownership 
idea. There are some complaints that the commis- 
sion is too cautious; that it has not reduced rates 
and charges as rapidly as it should have done. It is 
claimed that it has been too generous in the allow- 
ances made for intangible things in the valuation of 
plants. It has not satisfied the demands of those 
who expected a surgical treatment of the abuses of 
the railways and public utility corporations. Up to 
very recently at least, none of its valuations have 
been appealed from, either by the companies or by 
the cities. As to the justice of these complaints it is 
impossible for any one but an expert to form a judg- 
ment. But even those who criticise the caution of 



RAILROADS AND CORPORATIONS 81 

the commission admit that it has many achievements 
to its credit. Rebates and discriminations have been 
stopped, and all shippers and consumers have been 
placed on a plane of equality. Favoritism is said to 
be a thing of the past. The public utility corpora- 
tion has been taken out of politics. It is no longer 
the chief source of corruption in the state. This is a 
great gain, for the railways and the franchise corpo- 
rations are the controlling forces in the politics of many 
of our states as they formerly were in Wisconsin. It 
is no longer necessary for them to maintain a corrupt 
lobby at the state-house. They have, in fact, a legal- 
ized monopoly; they are freed from the danger of 
competition. The only serious menace is the possi- 
bility of municipal ownership, in which event their 
property is valued by the commission. Controver- 
sies as to rates and charges are settled after a full 
hearing. 

There is an end of such conflicts within the com- 
munity as rent Cleveland, San Francisco, Philadelphia 
and other cities in the struggle over franchise grants. 
For all franchises have been converted into indeter- 
minate state permits. Full information of the busi- 
ness of the company is open to any citizen. The 
light of publicity makes the corporation more careful 
in the methods employed as well as in the service 
which it renders. It cannot contribute to campaigns 
or maintain a " yellow dog" fund without it being 
known. 



82 WISCONSIN 

Investors are protected by the supervision of new 
securities. Bonds of Wisconsin corporations are said 
to have a higher value than those of neighboring 
states and are advertised as issued under the approval 
of the commission. They have ceased to be a specu- 
lative and have become an investment security. The 
insistence of the commission on proper provision for 
depreciation and maintenance protects the investor 
still further. The helpless bond-holder, exiled from 
the management of the ordinary corporation, is rep- 
resented by the state, which sees that his investment 
goes into the property. Still further security is given 
the corporation and the public by the prevention of 
wasteful competition. The law recognizes the util- 
ity corporation to be a natural monopoly, and pre- 
vents the duplication of plants as a waste which ulti- 
mately will have to be paid for by the community or 
the investor. Competing railways, water, electricity, 
gas, or telephone plants are only permitted where the 
community is inadequately served. No new per- 
mits are granted until both the community and the 
utility are heard and the commission grants a certifi- 
cate of the necessity for the undertaking. 

Under this supervision, the utility corporation 
is no longer a stock gambling undertaking. It has 
become an industry for the supply of a service which 
the state and the community recognize as primarily 
a public one. 

But one large question remains. And that is 



RAILROADS AND CORPORATIONS 83 

as fundamental, possibly more fundamental, than 
any that have thus far been solved. Can the con- 
flict between the profit-making motive, which must 
of necessity animate the public utility corporation, 
be harmonized with the ideal for service which 
should be the motive of public operation? Can 
the state so regulate the railways as consciously to 
promote its development; can it adjust passenger 
and freight rates to encourage industry, to stimu- 
late travel; can it make the private highway the 
circulatory system of the commonwealth? Can the 
local public utility corporation be so controlled as 
to develop a housing, industrial, and social pro- 
gramme? Or can this only be achieved through 
ownership and operation? Obviously the state 
cannot experiment with private property. It can 
experiment as it wills with its own. We see the 
elasticity of management in public water plants, 
see the ease with which rates and charges are ad- 
justed to uses, see the force of public opinion com- 
pelling the introduction of filtration plants or the 
improvement of water supply. In England and Ger- 
many the street railways, gas, and electric lighting 
plants, owned by the cities, are developed into 
agencies of social service in a way that is only pos- 
sible when the community is able to adjust its bal- 
ance sheet to a municipal programme of which 
these undertakings are but a part. Public opinion 
is able to coerce officials, the talent of the com- 



84 WISCONSIN 

munity is able to suggest new ideas, when service 
rather than profits animates the operation of these 
industries. 

European governments show what can be done 
with the railways when they are in the hands of 
the state. When Switzerland took over the rail- 
ways a few years ago it immediately improved the 
condition of the employees; it reduced freight rates 
and arranged the passenger fares to promote travel. 
In Belgium the state uses the railway system to 
distribute the working population far out of the 
cities into the surrounding villages. In Germany 
the railways are the most influential agency in 
the upbuilding of the empire. There is no conflict 
with the government or with the cities; no struggle 
over water-fronts or for monopoly. There is no 
attempt to strangle an industry or a community. 
Rather the reverse is true. Export trade is encour- 
aged by adjusting rates to industry. Fuel rates are 
arranged to the same ends. With the idea of profits 
subordinated to sendee, improvements, safety de- 
vices, and efficiency are promoted in countless ways. 
Under ownership the street railwa}^, the gas, water, 
and electric lighting undertakings, the steam rail- 
roads, express and other services take their place 
as the vital organs of the social body; they are oper- 
ated for the well-being of the community, for the 
proper distribution of population, for the reduction 
of the cost of living, for the encouragement of all 



RAILROADS AND CORPORATIONS 85 

industry, for making easy the proper development 
of the state. 

However perfect regulation may be such ideals as 
these are impossible so long as private ownership, 
animated by the desire for profits, remains. We 
can regulate only in a limited field; can correct only 
positive abuses. It is not within the power of any 
commission to utilize the property of a corporation 
to carry forward a social programme without regard 
to its effect on the property which it controls. 



CHAPTER VI 
SHIFTING THE COSTS OF HUMAN INJURY 

It is impossible to measure the influence of the 
common law on our every-day life. It is woven into 
our habit of mind as is no other institution, unless it 
be the church. From it we get our ideas of property, 
of what is right and wrong, of civil and criminal 
law. Through it the ethics of the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries have become the rules of con- 
duct of the present day. Through the common law 
many of the abuses and class relations of feudal 
times have been imposed upon us. 

As a system of jurisprudence, the common law 
draws its life from what has gone before. It is built 
on precedents altered only by slow judicial interpre- 
tation. The doctrine of stare decisis binds the court 
to the decisions of an earlier age, no matter what 
revolutions in social conditions may have taken place 
in the interim. The common law looks backward. 
It changes more slowly than any other institution. 
In addition, judges are conservative by training. 
Employed for the most part as lawyers in the defence 
of property, when they become judges their minds 
are colored by previous employment. They con- 

86 



SHIFTING THE COSTS OF HUMAN INJURY 87 

tinually widen the rules of some earlier decision for 
the protection of property. Slender dicta or acci- 
dental analogies offer a sanction for new decisions, 
which may cost society unnumbered millions as well 
as unmeasured sacrifice before they are reversed or 
changed by legislative action. The Dartmouth Col- 
lege case, with its subsequent interpretations, con- 
verted legislative acts into inviolable contracts. It 
protected franchise grants and sanctioned the issu- 
ance of thousands of millions of inflated securities, 
which have been a continuing mortgage on the 
nation. The income tax decision, reversing the hold- 
ings of the supreme court of the United States for 
nearly a century, deprived the government of a 
means of equalizing the burdens of federal taxation, 
while decisions based on the fourteenth amendment 
to the federal constitution, the widening of equity 
powers, the assumption of the right to issue injunc- 
tions in labor disputes, are instances of the costs of 
the common law, and the extension of the judicial 
opinions of an earlier time into present day life. 

The historic case of Priestley vs. Fowler has been a 
Pandora's box of evil to society. It has sanctioned 
criminal neglect by employers; it is responsible 
for unnumbered instances of miscarried justice, of 
human suffering and destitution beyond measure. 

Back in 1837, in one of the rural communities of 
England, one Priestley was employed by a butcher 
named Fowler. Priestley and a fellow-worker were 



88 WISCONSIN 

peddling meat when the cart broke down ; and one 
of the legs of Priestley, who was on the cart, was 
severely injured. Priestley sued Fowler in the 
courts to recover damages for his injuries. He was 
the first employee who ever ventured to bring an 
action under the English law to recover damages 
from his master on any similar state of facts. Priest- 
ley alleged in his complaint "that the defendant did 
not use proper care to see that the van [butcher's 
cart] was in a proper state of repairs, and was not 
overloaded, and that in consequence of the defend- 
ant's neglect in each of its duties the van gave way 
and broke down, and the plaintiff was thrown to the 
ground." 

The jury gave a verdict to the plaintiff for 
one hundred pounds. The judge set the judgment 
aside. An appeal was taken, and the high courts 
decided that there was no ground for the action, say- 
ing that the employee must be held to have assumed 
the risk of his employment and himself must be the 
sufferer for the negligence of a fellow employee. The 
following year the decision was approved by the 
courts of Massachusetts and became the law of this 
country. 

Mr. Gilbert E. Roe, of the New York bar, com- 
menting on this decision, says : 

These principles of law, devised by an English 
judge nearly a hundred years ago, in order to protect 
a master from liability for injury to his servant caused 



SHIFTING THE COSTS OF HUMAN INJURY 89 

by the breaking of the horse-cart on which he was rid- 
ing, as applied by our courts, have saved countless 
millions of dollars to the employing classes in this 
country, while they have killed and made paupers 
of untold thousands of laborers and their wives and 
children. These principles, as applied by our courts, 
have bred in some of the employing classes, a reck- 
less and wanton disregard of the safety and lives of 
the employed, and have aroused in the latter a class 
hatred which is a constant menace to our society and 
government. No one can estimate the suffering, or 
count the army of the dead and crippled, born of 
these dogmas of a primitive industrial time. I quote 
from the recent report of the American Association 
for Labor Legislation, where, referring to the statis- 
tics of railway casualties compiled for the year 1910, 
it is said : 

We find that nine men were killed each twenty-four hours, 
and that one was injured or killed every seven minutes. To 
be specific as to casualties as they occur in the engine, train, 
and yard service, is to say that one man was killed for each 
two hundred and five employed, and one was injured for 
every nine employed. 

War is safe compared to railroading in this country, 
I continue the quotation : 

What do the railways pay? No one knows; but it is 
reasonable to say that ten per cent of injuries and deaths 
for which compensation is paid, is the answer, and the average 
amount paid is low. . . . The miners claim that four men 
are killed in America to one in Europe, and it is admitted 
that mining ordinarily and normally ought to be accom- 
panied with less danger here than abroad. Structural iron 
and steel workers and electrical workers stand a heavy loss 
in death and disability only to be guessed at in the total, for 
we lack full statistics covering these occupations. It has 
been estimated that annually 4,000 Pennsylvania miners are 
killed or injured, and the records of Allegheny County, in 



90 WISCONSIN 

which the great iron and steel industries of the Pittsburg 
district are located, showed 10,000 casualties a year, a large 
proportion of which were deaths or total disablements, and 
eighty per cent of which were inflicted upon men under forty 
years of age. Few of these casualties have hope of recovery, 
because no one was at fault, and the others have been divided 
among a half dozen causes, few of which contained hope of 
recovery from the courts. 

The laborer assumed the risk of the employment. 
From the same report I quote again: 

A system of almost perfect mechanical production has been 
installed, and the man must keep pace with it. So much 
must be produced per man, per machine, per hour, and the 
man knows if he falls below the minimum of production he 
will lose his job, and a job is a job even in this land of oppor- 
tunity. He knows the inexorable rule. The result is that 
to change a gear, shift a belt, adjust a feed, or any one of the 
thousands of ways that are offered the man to take a chance 
and keep his machine going without loss of time, are accepted 
at the price of safety, and he pays the price. The employer 
pays nothing. The occupational diseases that must be as- 
sumed by the employee, of which there is really no record, 
must be considered among the casualties, although they have 
little hope of compensation. All of them add to the burden 
of general human misery arising from suspended or decreased 
wages. So we say advisedly, until sane rules of employment 
regulate industry, until it costs more to kill a man than to 
protect him, until the man and the machine are brought 
closer to the relative endurance of each other, and safety 
devices are installed that automatically will prevent acci- 
dents, we shall have an annual casualty roll that will war- 
rant a repetition of the statement, that the mines are stained 
with the blood of their victims ; every skyscraper is cemented 
with the blood and brawn of its builders; every large enter- 
prise is baptized in the blood of its workmen. 

American industry has been protected in every way pos- 
sible by law and court decision, but the employees, the 
foundation of American industry, have been thrown aside 
as scrap, and their bruised and broken bodies added to the 
long roll of human wreckage to attest to the unrecompensed 
sacrifices made in its behalf. 



SHIFTING THE COSTS OF HUMAN INJURY 91 

Had the doctrine of Priestley vs. Fowler been con- 
fined to the facts or situation involved, it would have 
done little harm and would now be merely one of the 
curiosities of the law. But our courts have taken 
the doctrine of that case, and made it control and 
decide cases differing from it in their facts as much 
as the simple butcher's cart, drawn by a horse to 
furnish meat to the countryside, differs from the 
modern ice-packed refrigerator car which traverses a 
continent in a few hours. Under the rule of assumed 
risk, the courts say that the section-hand injured 
by collision with a wild engine, of the approach of 
which he had no warning, cannot recover, for this 
is one of the risks of the business. 

So the list might be indefinitely extended, show- 
ing how the courts have built up a body of law to 
protect the employing classes from liability for inju- 
ries to their employees, which a humane and enlight- 
ened public sentiment long ago became convinced 
the employers should bear. That England, wherein 
the doctrine of assumed risk and the fellow-servant 
rule originated, long ago discarded both, seems to 
have meant nothing to our courts. 1 

Three-quarters of a century passed before any 
steps were taken in this country to correct the 
results of the decision in Priestley vs. Fowler. The 
decision of an English judge controlled the courts in 
the face of a revolution in industry. Neither the 
courts nor the legislature had the courage to repu- 
diate the precedent and compel the employer to 
protect his employees. On the contrary the judges 
continually widened the doctrine until recovery be- 

1 Our Judicial Oligarchy, Gilbert E. Roe, chapter VII. 



92 WISCONSIN 

came so costly, so tedious, so exceptional, as to ren- 
der the employee almost remediless in the courts. 

In 1909 the legislature of Wisconsin created a 
legislative committee to investigate the whole ques- 
tion of personal injury, industrial insurance, and 
workmen's compensation. It labored for two years; 
gathered testimony from Germany, England, and 
other European countries. It took the opinion of 
experts, of employers and employees, and in 1911 
presented a bill to the legislature embodying the 
results of its labors. The measure had the approval 
of many employers, who co-operated to secure its 
passage. This was largely due to the thoroughness 
of the committee's labors. It first prepared a ten- 
tative measure, which it distributed to interested 
parties all over the state. The proposed law met 
with great opposition. Hearings were held at which 
representatives of capital and labor confronted 
one another before the committee. From the 
information gained at these hearings a second ten- 
tative measure was drafted which was subjected 
to the same criticism. A third bill was drawn, then 
a fourth, finally, after these tentative measures had 
been subjected to the criticism of the state and after 
all classes had become acquainted with its under- 
lying purposes, a measure was prepared which had 
the approval of the commission and the public 
and which passed the legislature with very general 
approval. This indicates the thoroughness which 



SHIFTING THE COSTS OF HUMAN INJURY 93 

has come to characterize the legislative work of the 
state; it indicates the methods employed to allay 
opposition and promote an understanding of meas- 
ures. It is this that has so educated the state of 
Wisconsin on political, social, industrial, and educa- 
tional questions, that each step in the progressive 
programme becomes easier than the last. 

The bill was accompanied by a comprehensive 
report on the subject of workmen's compensation, 
which covered the whole field of industrial relations. 
The ends which the measure was designed to insure 
were: 

(1) To furnish certain, prompt, and reasonable 
compensation to the injured employee. 

(2) To utilize for injured employees a large por- 
tion of the great amount of money wasted under the 
present system. 

(3) To provide a tribunal where disputes between 
employer and employee in regard to compensation 
may be settled promptly, cheaply, and summarily. 

(4) To provide a means of minimizing the num- 
ber of accidents in industrial pursuits. 1 

European countries have made industrial insur- 
ance compulsory. Employers are compelled to 
pay the cost of such insurance without contribu- 
tion from the employee. The compensation is pro- 
vided at a fixed scale for injuries or death, the insur- 
ance being paid like any other fixed charge by the 

1 Report of special legislative committee on industrial insurance. 
Wisconsin legislature, 1910, pages 5, 6. 



94 WISCONSIN 

employer, who then adds the insurance premiums 
to the price of the commodity and shifts it onto the 
consumer. Human life is recognized as an element 
of cost, the same as the wear and tear of machinery. 
Wisconsin had to coerce employers into protect- 
ing their, employees by denying them the legal 
defences of "fellow servant" and "assumed risk." 
With these defences taken away the probability of 
heavy damages made it more profitable to provide 
compensation by insurance than to assume the risk 
of heavy legal damages for an injury. The act pro- 
vides that "in any action to recover damages for a 
personal injury, or for death resulting from personal 
injury so sustained, in which recovery is sought upon 
the ground of want of ordinary care of the em- 
ployer, or of any officer, agent, or servant of the 
employer, it shall not be a defence : 

(1) That the employee either expressly or im- 
pliedly assumes the risk of the hazard complained of. 

(2) When such employer has at the time of the 
accident in a common employment four or more 
employees, that the injury or death was caused in 
whole or in part by the want of ordinary care of a 
fellow-servant. 

With these defences abolished, the right to recover 
for personal injuries incurred in industry is reduced 
to the simple questions of, first, was there an absence 
of ordinary care on the part of the employer which 
directly caused the injury; and, second, was there 



SHIFTING THE COSTS OF HUMAN INJURY 95 

no want of ordinary care on the part of the employee 
which directly contributed to the injury. If, how- 
ever, the employer elects to come under the com- 
pensation act and pay a definite scale of damages 
for injuries sustained by his employees then he is 
not subject to the provisions of the above section. 
It applies only to those who decline to insure their 
employees. The law was not extended to railroad 
employees engaged in operation, who are protected 
by another measure. Railway shop employees are, 
however, included. 

Under the act compensation is provided in fixed 
amounts irrespective of fault or negligence. It is 
paid as a matter of right without the necessity of 
legal inquiry. 

Employers who accept the provisions of the act 
are required to furnish: (a) medical treatment imme- 
diately after the injury; (b) compensation at fixed 
and definite amounts for the injured employee, or, 
in case of death, immediate compensation to his 
dependents. " There is no time in case of a serious 
injury," said the legislative committee, "when aid 
is so greatly needed as immediately after the injury. 
The medical attendance should be efficient and 
prompt. The committee has endeavored to meet 
this situation by requiring the employer in all cases 
to furnish free medical and surgical treatment for 
ninety days, and by requiring that the compensa- 
tion be paid on the fifteenth day after the injury 



96 WISCONSIN 

and weekly thereafter, thus meeting the urgent 
requirements of the injured employee and his de- 
pendents. " 

The compensation is to be paid weekly like wages, 
on the scale of the man's previous income. In case 
of disability the employee receives 65 per cent of his 
average weekly earnings during the period of such 
disability, as well as an additional 35 per cent, mak- 
ing 100 per cent of his wages in all, in case the ac- 
cident is so severe as to require a nurse. 

The total indemnity for injury to a single em- 
ployee for a single accident is limited to a maximum 
of four times the average annual earnings of the 
employee, while the aggregate period of the insur- 
ance shall not in any event extend beyond fifteen 
years from the date of the accident. 

In case death results and dependent persons are 
left by the deceased, the indemnity is based on four 
times the average annual earnings, but in no case 
is less than $1,500 nor more than $3,000. This is 
paid to his dependents in weekly instalments corre- 
sponding in amount to the weekly earnings of the 
employee. 

The act further provides that the minimum basis 
of wages on which indemnity is calculated shall be 
$375 per year, and the maximum $750. This raises 
the scale above the minimum wages of women, 
children, and unskilled laborers, and keeps it fairly 
within the industrial classes. The scale is more 



SHIFTING THE COSTS OF HUMAN INJURY 97 

liberal than that proposed in any other state. The 
New York law provided for the payment of fifty per 
cent of the average weekly earnings, and in the case 
of death for a maximum of $3,000. The employer 
himself is required to provide medical and surgical 
treatment, because it is to his interest to furnish 
the best care possible in order to insure the earliest 
possible recovery of the injured person. 

Precautions are taken to insure that the employee 
receive the full compensation allowed by the act. 
The committee made an investigation and found 
that in 1904 only 29 per cent, and in 1908 only 50 
per cent, of the amount paid by employers to em- 
ployers' liability companies to indemnify them ever 
reached the injured employees or their dependents 
or their attorneys, while of this 29 and 50 per 
cent not more than 60 per cent ever reached the 
employee or his dependents, the other 40 per cent 
being used up as attorney's fees or in cost of litiga- 
tion. In other words, in one year the employer 
paid $82 in order to carry $18 to the employee, and 
in the other $70 in order to cany $30 to the in- 
jured employee. This waste is saved by ignoring 
questions of fault or negligence, and by fixing de- 
finitely the amount to be paid. 

Finally it was necessary to create a tribunal 
promptly to adjust any disputes which might arise 
between the parties. Under the present system 
litigation is protracted. It is costly to all parties. 



98 WISCONSIN 

A new tribunal was created known as the industrial 
commission, which, in addition to other duties, sits 
as a court to hear all controversies over compensa- 
tion and to compromise claims under the act. The 
board only acts in case of dispute, for the act spe- 
cifically provides what the measure of damages 
shall be, and expects it to be paid" by the employer 
as a matter of course. 

Promptness and finality in awards is provided by 
making the decision of the commission conclusive, 
subject only to review in the courts on the ground 
that the commission acted outside of its powers, 
or that the award was secured by fraud, or that the 
findings of fact do not support the judgment. All 
technicalities are abolished, as are opportunities for 
prolonged appeal, re-trials, and delays. 

The act could not be made obligatory on em- 
ployers. Nor could the employee be compelled to 
abandon his common law right of action. The act 
only comes into operation when invoked by both 
parties. The employer escapes the common law 
liability, which is greatly increased by the taking 
away of the old defences, by fifing with the indus- 
trial commission a written acceptance of the law, 
with all its liabilities. This notice is limited in its 
application to one year, but continues for succes- 
sive years without further action, unless the em- 
ployer, sixty days prior to the expiration of any 
year, files a notice electing to withdraw from its 



SHIFTING THE COSTS OF HUMAN INJURY 99 

provisions. The employee comes under the act, 
without any affirmative action on his part, on its 
acceptance by the employer. The employee can, if 
he choose, elect to abide by his common law rights 
by giving his employer notice in writing to that 
effect. Under such an election he waives all rights 
under the industrial insurance clauses. He is not 
permitted to wait until after an accident and then 
decide as to whether he will sue under the common 
law or accept the regular scale of compensation. 
He must do it on entering employment. 

The act went into effect in 1911, and despite the 
fact that its legality was attacked in the courts, 210 
employers had filed their acceptance of its provisions 
up to the end of January, 1912, with the liabilities 
which it involves. 

The abolition of the defences of " fellow-servant " 
and "assumed risk/' along with the compensation 
act, gave protection to the worker and a fixed com- 
pensation for injuries without the necessity of liti- 
gation. It coerced the employer to make his place 
of employment safe by increasing his risks. But 
it left the employer at the mercy of the accident 
insurance companies who might arbitrarily increase 
rates and injure the industries of the state. To 
protect the employer from this hazard the insurance 
law was amended so as to provide for the organiza- 
tion of mutual employers liability insurance com- 
panies. This law followed German models, in 



100 WISCONSIN 

which country all wage earners are insured by 
associations of employers organized according to 
trades. These associations are self-governing but 
are under the supervision of the state insurance 
boards. An employer becomes a member of an 
insurance association ipso facto on the establish- 
ment of an undertaking. He becomes liable to 
insure his work people and to pay contributions on 
their behalf. Premiums are assessed according to 
the risks of the industry. The workmen make no 
contribution, the whole liability being borne by 
the employers. These companies have the right 
to enact rules for the safeguarding of factories and 
the prevention of accidents. If an employer re- 
fuses to comply with these rules he may be fined 
and his insurance increased. Employees are repre- 
sented in the administration and are consulted in 
the preparation of rules for safety and protection. 
Compensation is paid to the worker irrespective of 
legal technicalities or defences according to a fixed 
scale of compensation. 

Legal obstacles which make this compulsory plan 
impossible in America were met in Wisconsin by 
a law authorizing employers to organize mutual 
accident insurance companies. Such a corporation 
may be organized by fifteen or more residents of 
the state to provide against loss or damage, by 
sickness, bodily injury, or death by accident of any 
person, subject to the limitation that each person 



SHIFTING THE COSTS OF HUMAN INJURY 101 

or corporation in the association shall have one 
vote, and its organization shall be approved by the 
commissioner of insurance. Two such mutual in- 
surance companies have been formed. The first 
one includes within its members the largest and 
strongest manufacturers in the state. It does a 
general liability insurance business in all lines. 
A second has been formed by the master plumbers 
association of Milwaukee to do liability business 
for plumbers. These companies are mutual in 
character like the mutual fire insurance companies. 

It is to the interest of all the members of such an 
association to improve working conditions, to reduce 
the risk of accidents, and to co-operate with the 
industrial commission to coerce employers who are 
recalcitrant. By this means the state appeals to 
the self-interest of manufacturers to improve fac- 
tory conditions. 

The law repealing the common-law defences of 
" assumed risk" and "fellow-servant," was attacked 
as unconstitutional in the courts. But the Wis- 
consin court, which generally reflects and sympa- 
thizes with the progressive movement in the state, 
upheld the law. The court, in a remarkably ad- 
vanced opinion, said: 

When an eighteenth century constitution forms 
the charter of liberty of a twentieth century gov- 
ernment must its general provisions be construed 
and interpreted by an eighteenth century mind sur- 



102 WISCONSIN 

rounded by eighteenth century conditions and ideals? 
Clearly not. This were to command the race to 
halt in its progress, to stretch the state upon a verit- 
able bed of Procrustes. . . . 

Continuing, the court said: 

It is a matter of common knowledge that this law 
forms the legislative response to an emphatic, if 
not a peremptory public demand. It was admitted 
by lawyers as well as laymen that the personal 
injury action brought by the employee against his 
employer to recover damages for injuries sustained 
by reason of the negligence of the employer had 
wholly failed to meet or remedy a great economic 
and social problem which modern industrialism has 
forced upon us, namely, the problem of who shall 
make pecuniary recompense for the toll of suffering 
and death which that industrialism levies and must 
continue to levy upon the civilized world. This 
problem is distinctly a modern problem. In the 
days of manual labor, for the small shop with few 
employees, and the stage-coach, there was no such 
problem, or if there was it was almost negligible. 
Accidents there were in those days and distressing 
ones, but they were relatively few, and the employee 
who exercised any reasonable degree of care was 
comparatively secure from injury. There was no 
army of injured and dying with constantly swelling 
ranks marching with halting step and dimming eyes 
to the great hereafter. This is what we have with 
us now, thanks to the wonderful material progress 
of our age, and this is what we shall have with us 
for many a day to come. Legislate as we may in 
the line of stringent requirements for safety devices 
or the abolition of employers' common-law defences, 



SHIFTING THE COSTS OF HUMAN INJURY 103 

the army of the injured will still increase, the price 
of our manufacturing greatness will still have to be 
paid in human blood and tears. To speak of the 
common-law personal injury action as a remedy for 
this problem is to jest with serious subjects, to give 
a stone to one who asks for bread. The terrible 
economic waste, the overwhelming temptation to 
the commission of perjury and the relatively small 
proportion of the sums recovered which comes to 
the injured parties in such actions, condemn them 
as wholly inadequate to meet the difficulty. 1 

1 Borgnis et al vs. The Falk Co. 



CHAPTER VII 
THE INDUSTRIAL COMMISSION 

The abolition of the old common law defences, 
together with the compensation act, assured the 
worker, whose employer came under the act, a 
money compensation for his injuries. It did not 
insure safe conditions of employment. The mutual 
insurance company plan enabled the employer to 
carry insurance at its actual cost. Both of these 
measures come into operation by act of the parties. 
Only indirectly do they improve conditions of em- 
ployment or safeguard the community from the 
social loss which accident and disease involve. 

The industrial commission act adds the coercive 
arm of the state to that of self-interest, to which 
the other laws appeal. Its purpose is to minimize 
the hazards of industry; to insure health and safety 
and prevent the social waste for which even insur- 
ance does not compensate. 

But the act goes much farther than this. It 
departs widely from previous legislation by creat- 
ing a board of experts not dissimilar from the rail- 
way commission, with the most comprehensive 
control over industrial conditions. It creates a 

104 






THE INDUSTRIAL COMMISSION 105 

tribunal of three persons appointed by the governor, 
with executive and quasi- judicial and legislative 
powers. The first appointees were C. H. Crown- 
hart, J. D. Beck, and John R. Commons, all men 
of recognized ability and ardently interested in 
the motives behind the measure. Professor Com- 
mons is probably our foremost expert on labor and 
industrial questions. 

The powers of the board are almost coextensive 
with the industrial field. It has authority: 

(1) To employ and control all the deputies and em- 
ployees usually identified with the factory department. 

(2) To administer and enforce laws relating to 
child labor, laundries, stores, employment of fe- 
males, licensed occupations, school attendance, 
bakeries, employment offices, intelligence offices and 
bureaus, sweat-shops, fire escapes, and all matters 
relating to the erection and repair of buildings and 
structures, and all other laws protecting the life, 
health, safety, and welfare of employees. 

(3) To investigate and prescribe safety devices 
and means of protection to employees, and to pro- 
tect their welfare as required by law; to establish 
museums of safety and hygiene. 

(4) To fix reasonable standards and to enforce its 
orders for the adoption of safety devices and means 
of protection, to carry out the laws and orders for 
the protection of life, health, and safety of employees. 

(5) To do all in its power to promote voluntary 



106 WISCONSIN 

arbitration, and the solution of disputes between 
employers and employees. It may appoint tempo- 
rary boards of arbitration. 

(6) To establish and conduct free employment 
agencies, to supervise private employment offices, 
to make known opportunities for work, to aid 
minors in undertaking skilled employments, to 
provide industrial or agricultural employment for 
vagrants, and to encourage wage-earners to insure 
themselves against distress from unemployment. 
It is ordered to investigate the extent and causes 
of unemployment in the state and remedies adopted 
therefor in this and other countries, and to devise 
and adopt means to avoid unemployment, to pro- 
vide employment, and to prevent distress from 
involuntary idleness. 

The act departs widely from the legislation of 
other states as well as the previous legislation of 
Wisconsin. It introduces a new idea into admin- 
istration. The commission is ordered to cure a 
disease, not to administer certain specified remedies 
irrespective of their efficacy. It is given a free 
hand with wide discretionary power. It has almost 
the whole field of industrial and social welfare under 
its jurisdiction. Like the public utility commission, 
it is an arm of the legislature in permanent session 
to crystallize into definite commands the general 
principles of social welfare above enumerated. 

Factory legislation has very generally failed in 



THE INDUSTRIAL COMMISSION 107 

America because of our attempt to enumerate with 
the minutest detail the evils to be corrected. Lit- 
tle latitude has been given to factory depart- 
ments, because of court decisions to the effect that 
the granting of such discretion is a delegation of 
legislative power which the constitution forbids. 
If the law says that shafting and belting must be 
safeguarded, the inspector cannot widen the law to 
include buzz-saws and other dangerous machinery. 
And if, as is constantly happening, conditions 
change, the only means of meeting the new con- 
ditions is by another law. In consequence factory 
legislation lags many years behind the evils to be 
safeguarded, while the factory inspectors, no matter 
how conscientious they may be, are hampered by 
the necessity of establishing their own decision in 
each case after wearisome litigation. The employer 
is also ignorant of what he is required to do. For 
while the inspector's discretion is limited to things 
specifically enumerated, he has wide authority to 
determine the things which the employer shall do 
to comply with the law. He can order such changes 
as his judgment suggests. Each inspector has a 
standard of his own. In consequence there is great 
diversity in the administration of the same law in 
different factories in the same state. The legal 
theory is that the legislature has fixed a standard 
and that all deputies act alike in its enforcement. 
This is, of course, impracticable. 



108 WISCONSIN 

This rigidity of the law explains many of our 
failures. Foreign countries frequently enact a gen- 
eral principle covering a subject, and then leave 
the administration of the principle to administra- 
tive boards which are in the nature of subordinate 
legislative bodies. Thus when France adopted a 
law requiring one day's rest in seven, it was done in 
a short paragraph and left to the ministry to issue 
orders prescribing the specific hours and days of 
labor in different districts. This method of pro- 
cedure is very common in European countries. It 
makes for efficiency and permits the law to be 
adjusted to changing conditions or specific evils 
which cannot be provided for by general statute. 
The industrial commission act adopts this idea 
to factory legislation. In this respect it is a depart- 
ure from any similar legislation in America. The 
idea was borrowed from the railway commission 
law, which controls public utilities, as the indus- 
trial commission controls industry. The railway 
commission is authorized to fix a "reasonable" 
rate for the service rendered. The courts have 
decided that the fixing of a "reasonable" rate by 
the commission was not a legislative act; it does 
not violate the constitutional prohibition against 
a delegation of legislative power. It merely makes 
an investigation and announces a finding, which 
was the "reasonable" rate the legislature had in 
mind. The commission is an agent for ascertaining 



THE INDUSTRIAL COMMISSION 109 

what the legislature had in mind and for giving it 
vitality. 

The industrial commission follows the same pro- 
cedure. It is an abandonment of the practice of 
providing by law for all industries and all conditions, 
and substitutes a kind of legislative sub-committee 
to enfore "safety." The law provides that " every 
employer shall furnish employment which shall be 
safe for the employees therein and shall furnish a 
place of employment which shall be safe for em- 
ployees therein and for frequenters thereof, and it 
shall furnish and use safety devices and safeguards, 
and shall adopt and use methods and processes 
reasonably adequate to render such employment 
and place of employment safe, and shall do every 
other thing reasonably necessary to protect the 
life, health, safety, and welfare of such employees 
and frequenters." It is further provided that, 
"no employer shall require, permit, or suffer any 
employee to go or be in any employment or place of 
employment which is not safe, and no such employer 
shall fail to furnish safety devices or fail to adopt 
processes reasonably adequate to render the place 
of employment safe." Employees are forbidden to 
"remove, damage, destroy, or carry off any safety 
device, or interfere with the use of any method 
adopted for the protection of any employee." 

Instead of being required to do certain enumer- 
ated, ofttimes obsolete and arbitrary things, the 



110 WISCONSIN 

employer is required to make his place of employ- 
ment "safe." This is a direct and categorical 
command. This is very different from the factory 
laws of other states, where the specific things to be 
done or the machinery to be protected is set forth 
in detail in the law. 

It is the duty of the commission to enforce 
"safety." It is a social constabulary with power 
to enact and enforce orders to protect the employee. 
It may change its orders, at will, or adjust them to 
local conditions. In place of a score of factory 
inspectors, each attempting in his own way to 
enforce inflexible laws, the commission itself, on 
complaint or on its own initiative, makes an investi- 
gation, holds hearings, issues orders, and compels 
their enforcement. General orders are issued for 
all factories, and special orders for individual fac- 
tories. Safety is interpreted in terms of the actual 
conditions of employment. 

Orders are drafted after consultation with em- 
ployers and employees, aided by an expert investi- 
gation by the staff of the commission. Hearings 
are held as to the reasonableness of the orders, as 
to their suitableness to actual working conditions 
just as by the railway commission. Orders when 
published have the binding effect of laws, and are 
"prima jade lawful. By this means factories can be 
controlled with an intimate knowledge of the evils 
to be corrected and with the co-operation of those 



THE INDUSTRIAL COMMISSION 111 

who know most about the subject. Any interested 
person may petition for a hearing before the com- 
mission on the reasonableness of its orders. But 
the order when made is presumed to be just, 
reasonable, and lawful until vacated and set aside 
by the courts, action for which purpose can only 
be begun in the circuit court of Dane County, 
located at the capital of the state. Such actions are 
given precedence over all civil suits, in order to ex- 
pedite them. As in the railway commission law, no 
ex parte restraining orders can be issued against the 
commission. It must have notice and hearing be- 
fore any injunction can issue. John R. Commons, 
of the commission, characterizes the new law as 
establishing: 

Progressive and accurate adjustment of factory 
inspection to the changes in industry and the new 
risks that accompany modern industry. Hitherto, 
when it was discovered that the buzz-saw or the set 
screw had been omitted from the law, it was neces- 
sary to get together the Federation of Labor, the 
Women's Trade Union League, and the friends of 
labor, to organize them into a lobby and to go down 
to the legislature in order to get the words " buzz- 
saw" or "set screw" inserted in the law. Now it 
is only necessary for the Industrial Commission to 
show that these things are dangerous and their pro- 
tection practicable. The difference is obvious. It 
now is practicable in Wisconsin, without further 
legislation, for the Industrial Commission to adopt 
and enforce the admirable rules of the Massachusetts 
Board of Boiler Rules, if they are found to be adapted 



112 WISCONSIN 

to Wisconsin conditions. So, also, the commission 
may learn from the novel work of "medical" inspec- 
tion of the Massachusetts Board of Health and the 
New York Department of Labor, and may adapt 
to Wisconsin, so far as practicable, the best that 
other states and countries have been able to work 
out for safety and sanitation of places of work. 

The programme of industrial and social legisla- 
tion of the session of 1911 was completed by a series 
of advanced laws for the protection of women and 
child workers against long hours and hazardous 
employment. Hours of labor for females were 
limited to ten a day and not more than fifty-five in 
any week. Night work was limited to eight hours 
a day and to not more than forty-eight a week. 
An hour for dinner is required during the working 
period. Employers are required to post copies 
of the law with notice of when work begins and 
ends, the time allowed for meals, and the maximum 
number of hours of work in any one day, in a con- 
spicuous place in every room where females are 
employed. 

The child labor laws were thoroughly overhauled 
by the last legislature with an eye to the welfare of 
the child, rather than of any demands of the em- 
ployer or the needs of the parents. Children under 
fourteen years of age are forbidden to work in any 
manufacturing establishment or any gainful em- 
ployment except during vacation periods, for which 
a permit must first be obtained. Children between 



THE INDUSTRIAL COMMISSION 113 

the ages of fourteen and sixteen can only work in a 
limited number of places of employment and then 
only after they have obtained a permit. Nearly all 
the manufacturing occupations in which children are 
generally employed are closed to children under six- 
teen years of age, as are all employments dangerous 
to life or limb or injurious to the health or depraving 
to the morals of the child, such as saloons, breweries, 
bowling alleys, dance halls, pool-rooms, or beer gar- 
dens. 

The hours of labor of children under sixteen in 
those employments that are open to them, are lim- 
ited to forty-eight hours a week. Night work is for- 
bidden, as is more than six days' work in any one 
week. Minors under eighteen years are forbidden to 
be employed about blast furnaces, docks, in erection 
work, or the repair of dangerous machinery, or in 
mines. The employment of women in or about any 
mine or quarry is specifically prohibited, as is the em- 
ployment of boys under fourteen years of age or girls 
under eighteen years of age, as bootblacks or at any 
street trade, or in the distribution of hand-bills or 
circulars. 

German ideas were copied again in the provision 
for continuation schools, by which children em- 
ployed in industry shall continue their studies up 
to the age of sixteen years. This is only obligatory 
in cities where evening, industrial, or commercial 
schools are established, but provision is made for 



114 WISCONSIN 

the compulsory establishment of such schools so 
that vocational school work will undoubtedly be 
very general. Where such schools have been estab- 
lished minors between the ages of fourteen and 
sixteen, who have secured working permits, shall 
attend the continuation school not less than five 
hours per week for six months in each year until 
they reach the age of sixteen, time for which study 
must be allowed by the employer without loss of 
pay. The establishment and supervision of con- 
tinuation schools falls under the jurisdiction of a 
state commission on industrial education, while the 
apprenticeship and attendance laws are administered 
by the industrial commission. 

Wisconsin is the first state to make provision 
for a comprehensive system of state employment 
bureaus like the labor exchanges which have been 
so widely developed in Germany and England. The 
industrial commission is authorized to establish such 
labor exchanges in the leading cities. 

Such a temporary exchange was opened in Mil- 
waukee in September, 1911, which was not con- 
nected with the commission. Men and women 
applying for work are registered free. A record 
is made of their age and qualifications and whether 
they are married or single. In three months 3,800 
men were registered, for whom one out of five were 
found jobs. Married men having children were 
given preference. For the first six weeks eighty 



THE INDUSTRIAL COMMISSION 115 

to one hundred men registered daily. Wages for 
unskilled labor rose from $1.50 to $2.00 a day during 
this period. Employers soon made it a practice 
to telephone the bureau for men, while manufac- 
turers and farmers were kept informed of the men 
seeking employment through the papers. The 
superintendent of the temporary exchange in Mil- 
waukee was appointed superintendent of the state 
system, which now includes exchanges in Milwau- 
kee, Oshkosh, Superior, and La Crosse. In time 
the entire state will be covered by a clearing-house 
association operating through a central agency for 
the supply of men with jobs and jobs with men. 

Wisconsin has undertaken the most compre- 
hensive programme of human conservation of any 
state in the Union. The state lays down the prin- 
ciple that every one has a right to be protected from 
the dangers, diseases, and exhaustion of modern 
industry. The laws enacted are a declaration, too, 
that the state has an interest in the health of its 
people; that property must be so used as not to 
injure humanity; that the purpose of organized 
government is to promote the well-being and work- 
ing efficiency of its citizens. 

Wisconsin has declared war on the unnecessary 
waste of the present industrial system. The state 
has recognized the helplessness of the factory 
worker. He is no longer a free agent; he cannot 
choose the place or the conditions of his employ- 



116 WISCONSIN 

ment. He cannot make provision for old age, for 
sickness, for accident. He is scarcely able to pro- 
vide for the education of his children, or keep his 
wife and child from the mill and the factory. The 
competition of men out of work tends to lower 
wages and the standard of living. The competition 
of the market forces the most humane employer to 
adopt the standard set by the least scrupulous. 
He is driven to pay the minimum wage, to substi- 
tute women for men, and children for women. He 
must work such hours as his competitors fix. He 
drives as hard a bargain as he can with the indi- 
vidual or the union. Except in a few monopolized 
industries, the employer himself is unable to control 
the conditions of employment. 

In this industrial struggle the workman is at a 
disadvantage. The substitution of new machinery, 
or the changing conditions of industry, bear most 
heavily upon him. He is the first to suffer during 
hard times. The employer can most easily econo- 
mize in his wages. The worker is helpless save 
as he is protected by the unions, which include only 
a small proportion of the working classes and do 
not reach the women or the children at all. He has 
become dependent on the machine which he no 
longer controls. His health is imperiled by unsani- 
tary conditions. Family life is destroyed when his 
wife or children enter the factory. All are subject 
to new dangers, to extraordinary hazards which did 



THE INDUSTRIAL COMMISSION 117 

not exist in an earlier age. Only the state can offer 
protection. Only by law can the wastage of life, 
health, and future generations be stayed. 

The industrial commission act has laid the 
foundations for an industrial programme not unlike 
that of the German Empire. It is the guardian of 
the state no less than the worker. Through employ- 
ment agencies it will do much to bring the workless 
worker to the employer. This will check trampdom 
and vagabondage. The commission is authorized 
to investigate the causes of unemployment and to 
promote such activities as will relieve the periodic 
distress of the unemployed. School attendance falls 
within its powers, as does the arbitration of in- 
dustrial disputes. In all these activities it is given 
wide latitude, and, animated as its members are with 
an enthusiasm and knowledge for their task, we 
may expect the development of a constructive ex- 
periment of great value to the nation. 



CHAPTER VIII 
STATE INSURANCE 

The possibilities of state or mutual insurance as 
an agency of social welfare has been maturing in 
the minds of men in Wisconsin for many years. 
Through insurance many of the casualties of life 
can be provided for; through it old age can be re- 
lieved of some of its terrors, as can sickness, acci- 
dent, or the hazards of industrial employment. 
In Europe insurance is used to protect workmen 
from temporary loss of employment. Some German 
cities have developed a system of motherhood 
insurance. Hamburg insures all property in the 
city, both public and private, against fire, as do 
some of the German states. The time will come 
when society will provide, as one of its natural 
functions, for the insurance of all people against 
the hazards of our complex industrial and social 
life with the vicarious costs which it involves. 

Repeated suggestions had been made in Wiscon- 
sin for a state life insurance fund. The idea origi- 
nated during the investigations of the old line life 
insurance companies conducted by the legislature 
six or seven years ago. Herman L. Ekern, the 

118 



STATE INSURANCE 119 

present insurance commissioner, then a member of 
the legislature, was a member of the committee, 
and through his study of the subject he became 
a recognized expert in insurance matters. Fol- 
lowing the legislation enacted twenty-three life in- 
surance companies withdrew from the state rather 
than comply with statutes which compelled them 
to report to policy-holders the annual earnings of 
their policies. An independent study of state life 
insurance was made by the senate members of the 
committee. Nothing came of the matter, however, 
until 1911, when an act was passed providing for 
the organization of what is in effect a state life 
insurance company managed and conducted by the 
state, the same as a private corporation. 

The idea of state insurance was not new in Wis- 
consin, for the state had insured its asylums, its 
university, state-house, and other public institu- 
tions against fire since 1903. The capitol had 
burned down in 1905 and left a deficit in the fire 
insurance fund of $190,000. Most states would 
have abandoned an experiment after such a disas- 
trous loss. But Wisconsin stuck to the principle 
and the accumulations of subsequent years have 
wiped out this deficit. The state charges itself 
less than sixty per cent of the premiums of the 
New York fire insurance companies, and is so con- 
tent with its experience that in 1911 it extended 
the privilege of the insurance fund to counties, while 



120 % WISCONSIN 

cities and school districts are urging that they, too, 
be permitted to enjoy its advantages. 

The state life insurance fund, for which provision 
was made in 1911, follows closely the experiences 
and business methods of the private life insurance 
companies. Four state officers, the commissioner 
of insurance, state treasurer, state auditor, and 
state health officer are ex officio trustees for the 
management of the undertaking and the invest- 
ment of its funds. The provisions of the law are 
very conservative, so as to avoid the possibility of 
failure. The right of insurance is limited to per- 
sons resident within the state, while the liabilities 
incurred are confined to the fund itself. All the 
transactions of the trustees are subject to super- 
vision by the commissioner of insurance. Policies 
may be issued to persons between the ages of twenty 
and fifty years. Insurance may be taken out in 
sums of $500 or multiples of $500 up to a maximum 
of $1,000 until the number of insured persons exceeds 
1,000. Then the maximum insurance limit is 
raised to $2,000 until the number of insured reaches 
3,000. The total insurance under the law may not 
exceed $3,000 for any individual. Provision is also 
made for annuities as a protection against old age. 
This idea was taken from European countries where 
this form of insurance is very popular. It is designed 
for the protection of persons of small means, who are 
enabled in this way to make provision for old age or 



STATE INSURANCE 121 

invalidity. Annuities are limited to persons of sixty 
years of age or over and may be issued for the sums 
of $100, $200, or $300 a year. The policy may com- 
bine both a life insurance provision and an annuity. 
Mr. Ekern, explains the motive of annuity insurance 
as follows : 

The state is directly interested in the questions 
of whether its citizens make provisions for their 
dependents and for themselves in old age. This 
goes far beyond the mere question of dollars and 
cents expended in poor relief. The saving of the 
self-respect of the unfortunate, the securing of the 
contentment and happiness which springs from the 
assurance of support in old age or in adversity, and 
the opportunities in life so afforded dependent chil- 
dren, are considerations which can in no instance be 
measured in money. The state exists to contribute 
to the happiness and well-being of its citizens. 
These objects can be furthered by sound insurance 
and annuities. Thrift and savings are desirable, 
and to these ends doubly desirable. To encourage 
these virtues for these purposes with the greatest 
economic saving through the life fund is the plain 
duty of the state. 

The state life fund has been surrounded with 
every precaution. Life premiums are based upon 
the American Experience tables of mortality, with 
additions for extra hazards and with interest at 
three per cent, and an addition for expenses and 
contingencies amounting to two dollars a year 
for $1,000 of insurance, and one-sixth of the value 



122 WISCONSIN 

of the insurance, distributed equally through the 
premium payments. The basis for annuity pre- 
miums is that of the British Office's annuity tables, 
with interest at three per cent, with a like one-sixth 
addition for expenses. Applicants must be exam- 
ined by a local medical examiner, for which a fee of 
two dollars is deposited by the applicant. No so- 
licitors are permitted. The state does not want the 
fund to grow too rapidly. By this means, too, agent's 
expenses are eliminated at the outset. Applications 
may* be filed at any state bank or with state factory 
inspectors or local clerks or treasurers, the person 
receiving the application being authorized to deduct 
twenty-five cents as well as one per cent of the first 
premium as his fee. The insured can make his own 
application, if he desires, and keep these fees himself. 

While the initial charge of insurance is substan- 
tially the same as that of conservative private com- 
panies, the ultimate cost is greatly reduced, because 
there are practically no expenses connected with 
the administration of the fund. All of the earnings, 
aside from the surplus for the protection of policy- 
holders, is distributed annually to the insured, who 
thus receive in dividends substantially all that they 
pay above the actual cost of the insurance. Man- 
aged as it is, by the state, it becomes in effect a 
mutual life insurance scheme. 

The legislature of 1911 also made provision for 
the insurance of deposits in banks. Wisconsin did 



STATE INSURANCE 123 

not follow the compulsory bank guarantee plan of 
Oklahoma and Kansas, but provided for the forma- 
tion of mutual co-operative bankers guarantee 
associations, like the mutual employers liability 
companies. The state assumed that the banks 
would be the best guardians of the solvency of 
other banks, and that self-interest would lead to 
caution and conservatism among the members of 
the association. This idea was borrowed from the 
very- successful New England factory mutual fire 
insurance societies, which during thirty or forty 
years have reduced the actual cost of insurance to 
their members to about one-twentieth of the pre- 
vious cost. Being all equally interested in the fund, 
they enforce improved construction, thorough in- 
spection, and by so doing have practically elimi- 
nated losses. For thirty years these companies 
have returned to their policy-holders annually in 
the neighborhood of ninety per cent of the premiums 
charged. The same instinct is expected to operate 
in the mutual bank depositors guarantee scheme. 

The average losses to depositors are well known. 
They range from one-tenth to one-twentieth of one 
per cent. This is the basis for the calculation of 
premiums. Fifteen or more residents of the state 
may organize a bank guarantee association, which 
must be approved by the commissioner of insurance 
before it can transact business. The association 
is limited to bank guarantees. Each bank is a 



124 WISCONSIN 

separate risk, and no association can begin business 
until it has a minimum of 200 risks. The maximum 
single risk is fixed, as are the annual expenses of 
the company. A bank can be insured to the amount 
of its total deposits. It is proposed that premiums 
shall be paid on the average amount of deposits for 
the current calendar year and be fixed at one-quarter 
of one per cent of the amount of the insurance. In 
order to place the association on a secure basis, a 
contribution of one-half of one per cent on the amount 
of the policy is required during the first year. The 
association has the power to determine what banks 
shall be admitted as members, thus enabling it to 
obviate the objection commonly raised to compul- 
sory insurance, that it places the incompetent or dis- 
honest banker on the same plane as the experienced 
and conscientious one. 

In this insurance programme, as in other legisla- 
tion, the state has endeavored to depart as little 
as possible from the traditions of individual initia- 
tive, and to enter upon direct state or socialistic 
activity only when it is the only alternative. The 
mutual idea is encouraged in employers liability 
and bank guarantee insurance, where the self- 
interest of members is expected to lead to efficient 
management, supervision, and economy. This idea, 
was not followed in the state fire insurance and state 
life funds, where solicitors expenses are out of pro- 
portion to the benefits. Running through the whole 



STATE INSURANCE 125 

programme of insurance against accident, against 
death and old age, against financial loss, is an appre- 
ciation of the changed conditions of society, as well 
as of the fact that the individualistic, laissez faire 
philosophy of the past generation is no longer ade- 
quate to protect the weaker members of the com- 
munity. 



CHAPTER IX 
COMMONWEALTH BUILDING 

Another notable contribution of the legislative 
session of 1911 was the State Board of Public Affairs. 
Like the railway and industrial commissions, it 
is a permanent commission with wide powers of 
investigation and action. It is a kind of legislative 
committee on the condition of the commonwealth, 
endowed with supervisory powers over all its depart- 
ments, resources, and possibilities. It is an efficiency 
bureau directed to standardize public accounting, 
to establish cost systems, to improve methods of 
making appropriations by the legislature, and to 
promote efficiency and economy in every possible 
way. The board is composed of seven members, 
of whom the governor and secretary of state repre- 
sent the executive branch, the chairmen of the 
senate and assembly finance committees represent 
the legislative branch, while three other members 
appointed by the governor represent agriculture, 
manufacturing, and labor. None of the members 
receive any salary, and none of them may be mem- 
bers of the university faculty. 

In addition to its other duties, the board is a kind 

126 



COMMONWEALTH BUILDING 127 

of ministry, like those of foreign countries. It is a 
clearing-house of information and advice for the 
legislature. One of its members is required to attend 
joint sessions of the legislature daily to answer 
"orally, any questions submitted in writing not 
less than three days before, by any member of the 
legislature, regarding the Board of Public Affairs 
and its work. 7 ' This is the first conscious attempt 
to put an end to the American idea of checks and 
balances, to the necessity of keeping the executive 
and legislative departments as wide asunder as 
possible. One of the causes of our failures in con- 
gress and the states is the absence of a permanent 
responsible ministry entrusted with a legislative pol- 
icy. The federal plan denies this to the executive 
department, while the legislative branch makes no 
provision for it. No department of the government 
is entrusted with the burdens of administration 
and legislation in an orderly intelligent way. The 
Board of Public Affairs is an attempt to co-ordinate 
the work of the various branches of the state, as 
is the rule of responsible ministries abroad. 

The board has been given other and even more 
important duties, which make its possibilities as a 
constructive agency of state building of great impor- 
tance. It is made the duty of the board : 

(1) To investigate the materials and resources 
of the state and to promote their greatest use and 
highest development, especially through home and 



128 WISCONSIN 

farm ownership, co-operation, publicity, immigra- 
tion, and settlement; to investigate the cost and 
standards of living within the state; the difference 
between the amounts which producers and dealers 
within and without the state receive for their prod- 
ucts, and the amounts which consumers pay there- 
for; and the measures that may be adopted to 
reduce this difference, and to provide for more 
economic distribution of products and commodities. 

(2) To co-ordinate by mutual agreement with the 
several public bodies, their investigations, and to 
provide for such additional investigations as may 
be necessary to carry out the purposes of this section. 

(3) To co-operate with agencies of the federal 
government and of other state governments and 
with voluntary associations having for their object 
the investigation and development of the resources, 
markets, industries, and opportunities of the state 
and of the various sections and communities therein. 

(4) To publish such reports and to make such 
recommendations to the legislature as may be 
advisable in carrying out the duties of the board. 

In some respects this law is one of the most con- 
structive achievements enacted by any of our states. 
The board is entrusted with a state-wide survey 
of educational, industrial, and social development, 
from a study of the materials and resources of the 
state. This survey includes city, county, and state 
planning in co-operation with local and state officials. 
The board is designed to co-ordinate all of the 
agencies of the state; to prevent waste and the over- 
lapping of functions and activities. It unites the 
university with the state-house and utilizes the 



COMMONWEALTH BUILDING 129 

agricultural and engineering departments, the rail- 
road and tax commissions, the library and state 
board of health. It serves as a central clearing- 
house for the geological survey, the highway com- 
mission, the forestry department, and the immigra- 
tion commission. Its function is to correlate all 
the agencies of the state into an efficient machine. 

Wisconsin has over 13,000,000 acres of cut-over 
and swamp land, in the northern part of the state, 
that has never been brought under cultivation. 
About 6,000,000 acres can be used for agriculture; 
the rest is suitable for forest cultivation. Stump 
removal and clearance is too costly for the individual 
farmer while markets are distant from this part 
of the state. In co-operation with the university, 
studies are being made of soils, as to the best sort 
of crops to be planted, of means for stump clear- 
ance by co-operative methods in order to bring this 
region under cultivation. The board is studying 
the idea of farming villages with allotments of land 
to be sold on easy terms. The extent and causes 
of tenancy, the possibility of developing co-opera- 
tive buying and selling agencies, the problem of the 
high cost of living, of unnecessary middlemen, of 
bringing the farmer closer to the consumer, are also 
under consideration. 

Much of this programme must wait. The imme- 
diate work includes a survey of public institutions 
and schools. School hygiene is being studied, as 



130 WISCONSIN 

are the methods of doing business by public bodies. 
The board is an accounting bureau to introduce effi- 
ciency methods in the transaction of public business. 
State budget making is being put on a scientific 
basis after comparison with the methods employed 
in other countries, while audits, statistics, and reports 
are being standardized. The board is also studying 
rural schools with the idea of making them more 
efficient. Immigration and its proper distribution 
under conditions most advantageous to the immi- 
grant is part of its programme. A study of prison 
labor is being made with the aim of converting the 
prisons into training schools of industrial education 
to supply the needs of other state departments and 
institutions. 

The state board of public affairs is a means of 
energizing the whole state and of developing its 
resources. It is a strategy board of peace, thinking 
in terms of consumers and producers, of property 
and of people, of human and material conservation. 

All this is part of a programme of state develop- 
ment toward which Wisconsin has already made a 
substantial beginning in water-power and forestry 
legislation. As far back as 1903 the state created 
a forest reserve of 40,000 acres. Two years later 
an act was passed creating a state board of forestry. 
It provided for the withdrawal from sale of lumber- 
bearing lands belonging to the state. These addi- 
tions increased the area of the forest reservation to 



COMMONWEALTH BUILDING 131 

over 300,000 acres, which, through subsequent pur- 
chases, have been increased to 425,000 acres. The 
state forester has laid before the assembly proposals 
for the acquisition of enough land to bring the total 
reserve up to 1,500,000 acres, to be developed into 
a state reserve for the growing of such timber as the 
state laboratories consider best suited to this region. 
The bulk of the forest land is located in the northern 
part of the state. Within its area is one of the most 
wonderful lake regions in America, including over 
1,200 lakes, which are the head waters of the largest 
rivers in the state. These lands are not suited for 
agriculture, but produce a fine quality of pine tim- 
ber. And the forestry department, looking ahead 
a generation, plans for a revenue from the sale of 
timber of $1,500,000 a year, and of twice that sum 
at the end of fifty years. A recreation ground for 
the middle west is projected about these lakes with 
a system of leasing cottage and club sites at a low 
rental. Here is a natural playground for the entire 
Mississippi Valley, like the lake regions of Canada, 
the mountains of Switzerland, or the national parks 
of the Yellowstone and Yosemite. 

The last legislature placed the water-power of the 
state under the control of the railway commission, 
but the act was subsequently held to be unconsti- 
tutional. 

In forestry, as in many other things, Wisconsin 
follows in the lead of Germany, which country has 



132 WISCONSIN 

nearly 35,000,000 acres of forests, of which 31.9 per 
cent belongs to the state and 18 per cent to the 
communities and the crown. Germany applies its 
scientific knowledge to forest culture as it does to 
the army and the navy. It found it necessary to 
check the destruction of its timber by law, in order 
that the wood supply of the country might not be 
exhausted. Forests are cultivated just as are farms, 
in order to stimulate growth and increase the yield. 
France, Switzerland, Scandinavia, and other Euro- 
pean countries have followed the same policy, which 
has been intelligently adapted to an American state 
in Wisconsin. 



CHAPTER X 
EQUALIZING THE TAX BURDENS 

There has been but little constructive work in 
state and local taxation in America. The conflict 
of powerful classes, each seeking to escape its proper 
burdens, the divergent interests of the country and 
city, together with the use of the taxing power for 
the control of the liquor business, have made scien- 
tific treatment of the subject impossible. The bulk 
of state and local revenues are derived from taxes 
on real estate. Assessments are made by local 
officials, who struggle to keep their valuations as 
low as possible. Wide inequalities in valuations are 
the rule even in the same jurisdiction. Public utility 
corporations have used their political power to re- 
lieve themselves from taxation. They, more than 
any other influence, have prevented any orderly 
treatment of the subject. 

The tax commission of Wisconsin, in co-operation 
with the department of economics at the university, 
has done much to bring order out of chaos in that 
state. La Follette made an issue of the proper 
taxation of railroad corporations when he was gover- 
nor. He found that they were escaping a large part 
of their taxes by means of a license tax system, based 

133 



134 WISCONSIN 

on gross earnings, which was in lieu of any tax on 
their property. The railroads were not taxed on 
their capital or physical property at all. The cor- 
rection of this inequality was one of the issues in his 
eight years' struggle. Finally, in 1903, a law was 
enacted which deprived the railroads and other 
public utility corporations of the privileges they 
were enjoying. It provided for the valuation and 
taxation of railroad property on the same basis as 
other property, which valuation was to include 
franchise values. Upon this valuation a tax is 
assessed equal to the average rate assessed on all 
other property in the state. 

Fearing that the new law might be declared uncon- 
stitutional, which would embarrass the state, it was 
provided that the license fees on gross earnings 
should be collected as in the past, awaiting a judicial 
determination of the validity of the law, with the 
provision that if the license fees paid were less than 
the amount of taxes paid on the property, the 
license fee so paid should be deducted from the 
total taxes and only the balance of the ad valorem 
taxes should be collected from the company. In 
case the license fees exceeded the taxes so assessed, 
the taxes must be deducted from the license fee and 
the balance refunded to the company from the state 
treasury. For the year 1904, the first year of the 
operation of the new law, taxes on railway property 
were increased from $1,948,340 under the license 



EQUALIZING THE TAX BURDENS 135 

fee, to $2,494,282 under the ad valorem rate, or an 
increase of $551,642. For the year 1905 the in- 
crease amounted to $671,381, while for 1906 the 
increase was $645,790. By 1911 the taxes of the 
railways had been increased to $3,330,819, or an 
advance of 70 per cent over the license fees paid 
seven years before. The license fee system was 
also abolished as to street railways, telegraph com- 
panies, express, sleeping-car, freight line, and equip- 
ment companies, their property being assessed at 
its full value in the market, including therein the 
franchise value. 

The railroads, telegraph, and other state-wide pub- 
lic utilities pay their taxes to the state treasury 
rather than to the local authorities. The rate is as- 
certained by dividing the valuation of all property 
on the local assessment rolls as ascertained by the 
tax commission into all taxes levied locally upon such 
property. This gives the average rate for the whole 
state, which is then assessed against the corporations. 
The tax rate for 1912 is $11.08 on each $1,000 of val- 
uation, which assessed against the railroads amounts 
to $3,605,165 for the year. 

When the change in the method of taxing public 
utility corporations was under consideration it was 
insisted by those opposing the law that the railroads 
would discriminate against the state and cease mak- 
ing improvements. Experience has proven the con- 
trary, the largest railroad in the state having con- 



136 WISCONSIN 

structed more lines in the state in the six years fol- 
lowing the passage of the law than it did in the fifteen 
years preceding it. 

In 1903 an inheritance tax law was added, with 
rates ranging from lyi to 15 per cent, depending 
upon the degrees of consanguinity and the amount 
of property transferred. The revenues from the 
inheritance tax law are paid into the state treasury. 
Receipts from this measure vary greatly according 
to the years. In 1905 they amounted to $125,964, 
while in 1910 they amounted to $283,566. In 1911 
they increased to over $1,000,000. 

Beginning with 1901, the tax commission has had 
power to equalize the assessments of property as 
made by local officials throughout the state. It 
sends its employees annually into every county to 
ascertain sale prices, which are compared with the 
assessed valuations which have been made in the 
county. Using these sales as a standard, it is able 
to judge as to the accuracy of the assessments made 
by local officials. From them it increases or de- 
creases the local valuations in order to bring them 
into harmony with the remainder of the state. By 
this means the total assessments have gradually 
been increased from a valuation of $746,002,932 
by the local assessors in 1900, to a total of $2,743,- 
180,404 by the state commission in 1910. It has 
been the aim of the tax commission to raise local 
valuations to the full market value of the property 



EQUALIZING THE TAX BURDENS 137 

as indicated by local sales. It increased the assess- 
ment of 1900 from $746,002,932 as returned by the 
local officials to $1,436,284,000. By 1904 the assess- 
ment had been raised to $1,952,700,000. Each year 
the local valuations were increased, the local assess- 
ment in 1909 being $1,613,427,747 which was in- 
creased by the state commission to $2,743,180,404. 
Of this total, $2,108,140,021 is real estate and $635,- 
040,383 is personal property. In making these 
studies, as well as in the valuation of railroads and 
public utility corporations, instructors as well as ad- 
vanced students in the university, taken from the 
departments of economics and engineering, are em- 
ployed. The tax and railway commissions co-operate 
in the making of valuations, and the properties of 
these utilities are placed upon the state tax roll on 
substantially the same basis as that recognized in 
rate-making. 

For some years prior to 1911, the tax commission, 
as well as the department of finance in the university, 
were engaged in an exhaustive study of the income 
tax with the idea of incorporating it into the state 
system. The income tax had been tried in Massa- 
chusetts, Virginia, and some other states, but had 
uniformly failed to yield a substantial revenue or 
to be properly administered. A most exhaustive 
study was made of the laws of other countries for 
the purpose of ascertaining effective methods of 
collection and administration, for this is one of the 



138 WISCONSIN 

vital weaknesses of the income tax. It is asserted 
that it is un-American, inquisitorial, and that our 
people, accustomed only to direct taxes on real and 
personal property and licenses, which can easily be 
ascertained, and to indirect taxes on consumption, 
would not adjust themselves to a disclosure of their 
incomes. 

The law as enacted in 1911 was drafted with all 
these considerations in mind. 

The law, too, was a recognition of the failure of 
the personal property tax, which it in part repealed. 
Taxes on money and credits, stocks and bonds, per- 
sonal ornaments, household furnishings, farm, or- 
chard and garden machinery, implements and tools, 
as well as one watch, and one piano, or other musical 
instrument, were exempted. The tax on other tangi- 
ble personal property was for the present retained, 
although the avowed purpose is to substitute the in- 
come tax for all personal property taxes. The rates 
of the tax are progressive, with reasonable exemptions 
to persons of small means. It applies to corporations 
and individuals, and covers all income, including the 
rental value of the house occupied by the owner. 
Residents and non-residents may be taxed for in- 
comes derived from sources within the state, while 
losses sustained within the year and not compen- 
sated for by insurance or otherwise, as well as taxes, 
may be deducted. The income exemptions allowed 
are as follows: 



EQUALIZING THE TAX BURDENS 139 

To an individual, up to $800 

To husband and wife, up to 1,200 

For each child under the age of eighteen years 200 
And for each individual person for whose 
support the taxpayer is legally liable and 
who is entirely dependent upon him for his 

support 200 

The deduction allowed for a family of five is . 1,800 

The rates on taxable incomes are progressive from 
1 per cent, on the first $1,000 of taxable income, up 
to a rate of 6 per cent on any sum of taxable income 
in excess of $12,000. Only 10 per cent of the reve- 
nue raised under the act goes into the state treasury, 
which pays the total costs of administration. Twenty 
per cent of the revenues so collected goes to the 
county, and 70 per cent to the town, city, or village 
in which it is collected. The tax is assessed by state 
officials, rather than local ones, the assessors being 
under the jurisdiction and control of the tax com- 
mission. 

All of the laws enacted since 1905 have been in the 
direction of increasing the taxes of those best able 
to pay. The change in the method of taxing rail- 
way, public utility, and other corporations, increased 
the burdens of these corporations by over $2,000,- 
000 a year. The inheritance tax law, as well as 
that on incomes, is a recognition of the principle 
that the burden of taxation should be adjusted so as 
to bear most heavily on those most easily able to 
carry it. 



CHAPTER XI 
THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF LEARNING 

A centuey ago education was limited to the 
privileged classes, teaching was a clerical profession, 
and the college a resort for priests, lawyers, and the 
leisured few. No one else thought of higher educa- 
tion, and only rarely did the unprivileged orders 
break into the institutions of learning. 

The college is no longer a cloistered thing. Edu- 
cation is constantly widening its vision, and America 
has broken with the traditions of the past more 
completely than has any other country. Engi- 
neering, chemistry, commerce, and journalism have 
been added to the classical courses. Our univer- 
sities have opened their doors to women. Those 
at the west have taken on schools of agriculture. 
Our higher technical schools are probably the best 
in the world. They have aided greatly in the solu- 
tion of mechanical, engineering, and mining prob- 
lems. A generation ago Johns Hopkins was founded 
as an institution for original research. It borrowed 
largely from the German university in its methods. 
The research idea has been widely copied by other 
universities, which have established graduate de- 

140 



THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF LEARNING 141 

partments on the German plan. Education in 
America has become a tripod of research, of voca- 
tion, and of culture, each widening the mediaeval 
idea of the university to meet the changing democ- 
racy of life. 

It remained for Wisconsin to develop a fourth 
function, that of service. To " carry out knowledge 
to the people," President Van Hise says, is the 
fourth function of the university. Not to the 
young alone, but to men and women of middle life 
who have had no opportunity for advanced study. 
This Wisconsin is doing. It is projecting the uni- 
versity into the most distant township, even into 
the factories, mills, and lumber camps of the state. 
It assumes the existence of the want and offers 
opportunities for its satisfaction. The time is not 
distant when the university will make it possible 
for any one to pursue any studies in connection with 
his daily work. Education will then become a 
life-long pursuit that does not terminate with the 
high-school or the college. There will be oppor- 
tunity for the study of new subjects or the con- 
tinuation of old ones under university direction. 

This is already being done in a very definite way. 
Wisconsin is offering higher education to the entire 
state. There are already more students enrolled 
outside of the university than there are at Madison. 
They are to be found on the farm, in factories, shops, 
offices, stores, and homes. There are ninety-eight 



142 WISCONSIN 

organizers, instructors, field men, and advisers, who 
constitute an extra-mural faculty for a college of 
5,370 correspondence students alone whose number 
is growing each month. 

President Van Hise looks upon the university 
not only as a laboratory for the study of the prob- 
lems of the state, but as a means for discovering 
and conserving the talent of the community. He 
boldly says it ought to undertake any kind of edu- 
cational work for which it is best fitted. "I would 
have no mute, inglorious Milton in this state," he 
says; "I would have everybody who has a talent 
have an opportunity to find his way so far as his 
talent will carry him, and that is only possible 
through university extension supplementing the 
schools and colleges." He tells of a boy named 
Mellish, out in the little town of Cottage Grove, 
supporting his mother, sister, and aged grandfather 
on a farm of forty acres. The boy was so interested 
in astronomy that he made a telescope for himself, 
and after his work was done in the fields he searched 
the sky far into the night with his little home-made 
instrument. He discovered two of the seven or 
eight comets found by all the astronomers of the 
world in 1907. This boy was reached through the 
correspondence classes in mathematics, and has 
done remarkable work. 

The purpose of the extension department is "to 
educate all people in all places, for the daily occu- 



THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF LEARNING 143 

pations of life." To this end it has established 
correspondence courses, as well as lectures and 
institutes. It maintains bureaus, publishes bulle- 
tins, and conducts regular college extension classes 
to supplement the correspondence study. As long 
ago as 1889 the catalogue of the university said, 
"The realms of knowledge widen as fast as the pos- 
sibilities of instruction, and faster than the pos- 
sibilities of general reception; but it is no more 
impracticable to extend the popular range of uni- 
versity education than to extend the sweep of the 
university courses. It can scarcely be more pro- 
phetic to contemplate the higher education of the 
masses to-day than it was to look forward to the 
common education of the masses a few centuries 
ago. The latter nears its realization; endeavor 
now begins to reach forward toward the former/' 

In the early nineties there was a wide-spread 
development of university extension in almost 
every state in the Union. Then it declined. Enthu- 
siasm soon wore off. The work was recreative, 
rather than serious and vocational. The student 
had no goal; there were no physical instruments 
for properly doing the work. The extension depart- 
ment at Wisconsin became moribund. In 1907 it 
was vitalized when Louis E. Reber came to Madi- 
son to take charge of the work as dean of the depart- 
ment. He developed the extension idea on a new 
and sounder basis, and the achievements of Wis- 



144 WISCONSIN 

consin are now being copied in many of the states 
of the West. 

It was ascertained that 35,000 Wisconsin students 
were pursuing correspondence courses in the com- 
mercial institutions. Dean Reber saw that this 
work could be done more cheaply and far more 
thoroughly by the university, with its corps of 
thoroughly trained men, than by any private school. 
A correspondence department was started. In De- 
cember, 1906, it had but 26 students. By the 
following June the registration had grown to 106. 
Six months later it was 577. In January, 1909, 
there were 1,592 students; in September, 1910, the 
number had grown to 4,794, and in January, 1912, 
to 7,988. This was the total enrolment of five 
years. Of these, 4,219 individuals were pursuing 
courses in January, 1912. 

There are 63 branches in different parts of the 
state, and 98 professors and instructors connected 
with the department. Nearly 250 courses of study 
are offered, representing 34 departments of the 
university. Through these courses work is offered 
the business man in banking, corporations, insur- 
ance, monopolies, trusts, and political economy. 
The principles of salesmanship and business ethics 
are taught. The chemist, astronomer, and pharma- 
cist find courses adjusted to their wants. Public 
school music is offered for those preparing to teach 
in the public schools. Law, literature, surveying, 



THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF LEARNING 145 

the study of power transmission, gas-engines, loco- 
motive maintenance, and a dozen engineering courses 
are offered to people in every part of the state. 
There are classes in Latin and Greek, in French, 
German, and Italian. Higher mathematics is one 
of the more popular courses. The great majority 
of the students are registered in vocational courses, 
not of college grade or designed as preparation for 
college work. They are studying mechanical engi- 
neering, electricity, drawing, plumbing, pattern- 
making, and business. Nearly one-fourth of the 
students are pursuing studies of university grade, 
the balance being in vocational, high-school, and 
preparatory work. For the year ending July, 1910, 
376 students had completed their courses, and 192 
had secured university credits. Of the total num- 
ber enrolled, 345 had dropped out. The total regis- 
trations up to February, 1911, in correspondence 
work was as follows: Vocational, 3,511; university 
grade, 1,467; high-school and preparatory, 416; ele- 
mentary school, 305, and advanced, 12. 

Experience quickly demonstrated that corre- 
spondence work had to be vitalized by personal con- 
tact. The university met this weakness by send- 
ing out instructors, who formed groups of men 
in single subjects and gave them class-room work 
several times a month. In the beginning these 
instructors were drawn from the regular university 
faculty. It was found, however, that the extension 



146 WISCONSIN 

work required special qualities for this task. The 
teacher must be familiar with shop conditions, he 
must have the ability to deal with men, and above 
all he must have great enthusiasm for his work. 
It was necessary to develop a new type of instructor. 
Laboratories were also required, and this need was 
met by the use of factory shops and the laboratories 
of the local school-houses. 

In order better to carry on this work, the state 
is being organized into districts, in each of which, 
organizers, teachers, and a superintendent, together 
with an office, class-room, and library facilities, are 
provided. The Milwaukee district consists of five 
counties, with a permanent working force of seven- 
teen men. Two other districts have been developed, 
with centres at Oshkosh and La Crosse. In each 
of these an organizer is placed to promote the work. 
He studies the social, economic, and industrial con- 
ditions of his district. He co-operates with school- 
boards, town councils, clubs, and public libraries. 
He develops the lecture courses, the exhibits, demon- 
strations, and extension work. In time the whole 
state will be covered by district university centres, 
to which boys and girls, old and young, can come 
for some form of university instruction. 

The extension work responded immediately to 
the change. Correspondence work was vitalized 
by personal contact with the teacher. A larger 
percentage of students complete the courses than 



THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF LEARNING 147 

under the old methods. Then with some misgivings, 
the university decided to accept correspondence 
work when satisfactorily done as counting toward 
a degree. It permits the student to do one-half his 
work in absentia. After several years' test it is 
said that work done by correspondence students is 
of as high an average grade as that of an equal 
number of resident students. Dean Reber says: 
"Although many of them (i. e., correspondence 
students) are unused to mental exertion and have 
not been accustomed to conserve their leisure time, 
but a small proportion of them have dropped work 
once begun, and some of them have manifested 
enthusiastic interest, even forming study clubs 
among themselves which meet more frequently than 
their classes, for discussion and mutual helpful- 
ness." His testimony as to the quality of work 
done by students seeking university credits is equally 
remarkable. He says: "I believe I can safely say 
that in no instance has a student who has taken pre- 
liminary correspondence work failed to make a good 
standing in his resident studies. The high rank 
maintained by these students is so uniform as to 
have done much toward removing the prejudices 
which at one time existed in the university against 
the practice of allowing credit for correspondence 
study." In the isolated districts, where there are 
no public libraries, the state library commission 
supplies books to individual students. Where 



148 WISCONSIN 

possible the public schools and their laboratories 
are utilized for evening classes. 

This represents the new idea in university exten- 
sion. It is serious, earnest, practical. Employers 
have responded to the work with enthusiasm and 
are anxious to have it extended. They supply 
rooms and facilities for factory classes, and give 
the men full pay for time devoted to the work. In 
the case of apprentices following special courses, 
a half day a week is usually given. Twenty-five 
manufacturers are co-operating with the university 
in this way. In order to meet the limited training 
of many students, special text-books are being pre- 
pared. 

The response to the extension work from the state 
was immediate. The appropriation for this pur- 
pose in 1907 was but $20,000 a year. In 1909 it 
was raised to $50,000, and in 1911 to $100,000 for 
that year and to $125,000 for 1912. Appropria- 
tions were also made for agricultural extension. 
Including the receipts from fees, Wisconsin is spend- 
ing the sum of $185,000 for bringing the university 
to the people. 

It is not many years since the public library was 
securely enclosed behind locked doors and accessible 
only to the favored few who enjoyed the confidence 
of the librarian. It, too, was a privileged institu- 
tion like higher education. America has opened 
wide its library doors, and democratized books as 



THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF LEARNING 149 

has no other nation. The free public library is one 
of America's real contributions to society. Com- 
missions come to this country from Europe to study 
our methods. No city is complete without a public 
library, many of which have opened branches to 
render its facilities more accessible to the people. 
The travelling library has become an institution 
in many states. Small selected libraries of books 
are sent out by the state library to individuals or 
clubs, the state paying one-half the cost of convey- 
ance. This idea was first tried in New York in 
1893, when the state library began to send out small 
libraries of one hundred volumes to towns and vil- 
lages not provided with free libraries. These 
travelling libraries remain in the community for 
six months, and are then exchanged for another. 
The idea proved so popular that in 1895 Michigan 
adopted it, and the next year Iowa set aside $5,000 
for this purpose. The Wisconsin free library com- 
mission was organized in 1896. By 1898 there were 
186 travelling libraries in the state, by 1900, 238, 
and in May, 1910, the number had grown to 944, 
including the state and county systems. The total 
number of volumes was 44,527. 

There are three sizes of travelling libraries, one 
of thirty volumes, one of fifty-five volumes, and 
another of one hundred volumes. They may be 
kept for six months. In order to secure a library, 
a group of ten persons is organized, who select a 



150 WISCONSIN 

librarian to represent the association. There is 
no charge to the individual for the use of books, 
although the state makes a charge of $12 a year to 
the centre. 

Bulletins are issued on topics of public interest. 
The library co-operates with reading and debating 
clubs, with labor unions, officials or individuals, and 
sends out collections of books on current questions 
of public interest for their use. It makes use of the 
university, and of the legislative reference bureau 
for aid and co-operation. Any student pursuing a 
special subject can secure the assistance of the li- 
brary in his work. Small reference libraries on 
special subjects are loaned, as are collections of Cop- 
ley prints, steel engravings, and photographs, which 
are used by local libraries for exhibition. Current 
magazines are distributed in the same way. Through 
these means the farmer, the mechanic, even the 
distant lumber camps in the northern part of the 
state, are brought in touch with inaccessible fields 
of human knowledge. 



CHAPTER XII 
THE BRAIN OF THE COMMONWEALTH 

"We already know enough about agriculture/' 
says President Van Hise, "if the knowledge were 
properly applied, to double the product of the na- 
tion with ease. We know enough about soils so that 
their fertility could be greatly increased. We know 
enough, too, about scientific medicine to eradicate 
dangerous infectious diseases. If we applied to hu- 
mankind what we know about the breeding of ani- 
mals, the feeble-minded would disappear in a genera- 
tion, while the insane and criminal classes would be 
reduced to a fraction of their present numbers. Even 
in politics we have sufficient scientific knowledge to 
greatly improve the government of the city, state, 
and nation. " 

To democratize the knowledge of the few and make 
it the possession of the many is one of the ideals of 
the University of Wisconsin. It is a research bureau 
of politics, of agriculture, of mechanics, of hygiene. 
President Van Hise sees politics in terms of people. 
To him the waste in human talent is the costliest 
waste of all. It can only be prevented by knowledge 
and the conversion of that knowledge into action 

151 



152 WISCONSIN 

through democracy. And the university is the lab- 
oratory for this purpose. It is a publicity bureau 
for the dissemination of learning as well. Investiga- 
tions have been made to secure pure water for cities 
and to protect it from contamination. Hygiene ; 
sanitation, and infectious diseases have been studied. 
The state has undertaken a comprehensive road- 
building programme, to promote which the univer- 
sity organized classes to teach local officials how to 
build roads. One hundred and forty-eight students 
enrolled in the course. The engineering department 
aids manufacturers in the solution of problems too 
big for an individual to undertake. It worked out 
methods for the use of reinforced concrete for build- 
ing. It aided mine owners by studying the best 
method of extracting lead and zinc. It loans its en- 
gineering experts to the state commissions to value 
the railways and public utility corporations for tax- 
ation and as a basis for rate-making. Studies of 
efficiency management, of meters, of gas, electricity, 
and telephone equipment have been made and stand- 
ards established for the use of managers and cities. 
This has greatly improved the efficiency of the pub- 
lic utility corporations. The stationary engineers 
in Milwaukee organized classes for the study of 
steam engines, boilers, and kindred subjects. A num- 
ber of physicians enrolled in correspondence courses 
in bacteriology which require several weeks of re- 
search work in a laboratory. A milk exhibit was 



THE BRAIN OF THE COMMONWEALTH 153 

held in Milwaukee in co-operation with the school 
board, where teachers lectured before children during 
the day and gave special lectures to mothers at night. 
In 1909 ; a conference was held in Madison on crim- 
inal law and procedure, with the aim of improving 
the administration of the penal code and the preven- 
tion of crime. Thus the scientist becomes the co- 
worker with the politician. 

In the main building of the university, occupying 
several rooms and the basement, is the department 
of general information and welfare. It is a clearing- 
house of almost any kind of service or information 
for individuals, clubs, cities, counties, or commercial 
organizations. It is a questions and answers depart- 
ment of the state. It gathers material from every 
source, from experts and publications, in response 
to inquiries. It is designed to be a link between the 
people of the state and the results of scientific re- 
search ordinarily closed to them. It aims to convert 
into popular form the great fund of useful informa- 
tion in the form of bulletins issued by federal and 
state departments, and to distribute it to the people 
desiring information. It translates the language of 
the scientist into popular form. Bulletins, mono- 
graphs, and leaflets on topics of general interest are 
printed and distributed, data bearing upon discov- 
eries, inventions, and the advance in knowledge is 
brought to the people at little or no cost to them, 
and in language which they can understand. 



154 WISCONSIN 

The department uses the state board of health to 
help a community clean up unsanitary conditions, or 
the engineering department to co-operate with local 
authorities to improve the water supply, to protect 
the milk, or aid in the solution of some local prob- 
lem. It calls on the bureaus at Washington or the 
professors in the university, in response to almost any 
demand. It carried on a campaign against tubercu- 
losis, with an exhibit of diagrams, models of houses, 
ventilating devices, and pictures, which were sent 
about the state with an expert demonstrator, who 
gave popular talks on means of its prevention. The 
demonstrator showed the loss and suffering from 
the disease, and awakened the state to an interest in 
the subject. A bakers' institute was organized in 
Milwaukee, attended by 125 bakers. There were 
demonstrators of pure food, methods of testing ma- 
terials, baking tests, sanitation, presented by experts 
on the subject. 

Connected with the department is a municipal 
reference bureau directed by an expert. It "collects 
data and information on all the varied subjects of 
municipal activity and municipal government for the 
purpose of rendering that material accessible to the 
cities and citizens of the state." It gathers city 
charters, ordinances, and other documents, and loans 
them to cities. It makes expert investigations on 
municipal insurance, the oiling of streets, uniform 
municipal accounting, and commission government. 



THE BRAIN OF THE COMMONWEALTH 155 

It is a recognition of the demand for the expert in 
city business. The department draws on the experi- 
ence of other cities. It offers the achievements of 
New York, Berlin, or Boston to the cities of Wis- 
consin. Within nine months after its organization 
900 inquiries for advice were received from municipal 
and other officials, while 3,000 copies of its report on 
the commission form of government were distributed 
in three months following its publication. The de- 
partment assists city officials in paving, sewage dis- 
posal, parks, playgrounds, street cleaning, dust pre- 
vention, smoke abatement, accounting methods, 
statistics, care of trees, schools, charities, or any 
other subject in which the city is interested. 1 The 
department has correspondents in the larger cities 
of America and sends out lecturers from the uni- 
versity who give courses on municipal topics. It 
is an attempt to equip the city with expert assistance 
in the solution of its problems. 

The department of information and welfare pro- 
motes lecture courses of a serious or popular char- 
acter. It supplies lecturers and entertainments. It 
sends out members of the faculty of politics, soci- 
ology, and history, of the arts and science depart- 
ments. It offers readings from Shakespeare and hu- 
morous recitals, as well as plays like "The Servant 

l When the socialist administration was elected in Milwaukee in 
1910 it sent to the university for an instructor to come to Milwaukee 
to organize classes for the instruction of the aldermen in city admin- 
istration. 



156 WISCONSIN 

in the House/ ' the folk songs of Scotland, Ireland, 
and England, in line with its policy of doing any- 
thing for which it is the best fitted instrument. The 
university amuses and entertains, as well as instructs 
the state. 

Another branch of the department promotes de- 
bates and discussions. It sends out instructors who 
organize debating societies and clubs to discuss social 
and political questions. It trains debaters and speak- 
ers and vitalizes the life of the community. It col- 
lects and classifies magazine articles and pamphlets, 
and equips clubs with material for any kind of liter- 
ary activity. These package libraries are sent free 
of cost and open up the resources of the university 
library to the most distant part of the state. 

Wisconsin is reviving the old town meetings of 
New England through the department of debating 
and public discussion. Through it the state is being 
educated on questions of local and national interest. 
The electorate is prepared for each new step and 
familiarized with questions submitted to referendum 
vote. A writer in the Boston Herald, after a care- 
ful examination of this branch of the extension de- 
partment, wrote of it as follows: 

Early in November the citizens of Wisconsin will 
vote for or against an amendment to the state con- 
stitution which will permit the legislature to appro- 
priate money for the construction or improvement 
of public highways. The issue is: Shall the state 



THE BRAIN OF THE COMMONWEALTH 157 

undertake "an economical and efficient system of 
road-building upon an extensive scale?" Where 
shall John Doe, who lives in a remote hamlet, or 
Richard Roe, who lives in Milwaukee, look for 
information enabling him to vote intelligently on 
the amendment? To the journalists, politicians, 
and local solons only? Not in Wisconsin. The 
people have a university which conceives it to be 
its duty, and its privilege, to furnish information, 
dispassionate and non-partisan, so far as can be, 
to all citizens of the state, on every matter of pub- 
lic importance. The people look upon it as "our 
university." It crowns their system of free public 
education. They elect its regents. They pay its 
bills. They know that its investigators have added 
millions to the wealth of the state. They know 
that its experts have aided in shaping progressive 
legislation and in defeating forces that hitherto 
have been powerful at the state capital. 

It must be obvious that, if referendums are to 
settle public questions, if constitutions are to be 
amended during the next decade or two, an elector- 
ate aided to intelligent action on the issues involved 
by those who are above the suspicion of partisan- 
ship or of personal interest in the matter will act 
with far greater wisdom than an electorate which 
is not so served. 

Possibly a Wisconsin voter may have his doubts 
whether the initiative and referendum are good or 
bad devices of modern democracy. He writes to 
the university, not for an opinion representing its 
views, but for information as to what is said for the 
new device by those who believe in it and by those 
who do not. It costs him but two cents to get his 
reply. Serial No. 224, General Series No. 25, 
comes back. In it the initiative and the referen- 



158 WISCONSIN 

dum are defined. The history of the movement 
in Wisconsin is briefly set forth. Then follow 
references^ pro and con, to the material in the 
legislative reference department, useful if the seeker 
be a legislator; or to the pamphlets on the subject 
issued by the states of Ohio and Oregon, which 
can be had through correspondence. Supplementing 
these are references, to page and chapter, to books of 
general circulation, to arguments by critics and by 
advocates, and to the literature of propaganda on 
the subject. Similar pamphlets are to be had on 
the vexed issues of election of senators by popular 
vote, the parcels post, postal savings banks, woman 
suffrage, and proportional representation, and each 
pamphlet shows how the matter may be still farther 
followed up through correspondence study with the 
university. 

Such a system of relating a university to the 
practical, exigent, political needs of the people, or 
training them to look to the educated expert for 
sources of information seems to us splendidly effi- 
cient, viewed from a pedagogical standpoint, and 
in very truth democratic. The institution thereby 
conceives of the whole electorate as its potential 
student class, as well as its donor of funds and its 
sovereign in law. 

During the year 1910, 1,925 package libraries, 
containing about 120,000 articles on 550 different 
topics, were sent into 259 communities in the state. 
There were 12,790 bulletins distributed. The pack- 
age libraries bore upon banking, cities, conservation, 
immigration, labor, municipal ownership, the initia- 
tive and referendum, railroads, trusts, and agricul- 



THE BRAIN OF THE COMMONWEALTH 159 

ture. There were packages on art, biography, child 
welfare, civic improvement, travel, history, music, 
rural life, socialism, and women. In this way Wis- 
consin makes war on the isolation of the farm and 
the village, as well as on the ignorance which lies 
back of political, social, and industrial conditions. 

During the winter of 1910, an institute of municipal 
and social service was held in Milwaukee. It was 
continued for six months and brought to the city 
experts from all over the country interested in mu- 
nicipal, philanthropic, charitable, child labor, and 
industrial conditions. There were lectures and dis- 
cussions definitely organized to cover almost every 
phase of municipal service. A similar conference 
was held in October, 1911, on charities and correc- 
tions in conjunction with the Wisconsin xinti-Tuber- 
culosis Association. 

The university is a great nerve centre, out from 
which influences radiate into every township in the 
state. No locality is so obscure that it is not touched 
by these forces, and no citizen is so poor that he can- 
not avail himself of some of its offerings. The ideal 
of the university as expressed by President Van Hise 
is being realized. He says, "Each individual should 
have an opportunity to develop to the fullest degree 
the endowments given him by nature, whether they 
are large or small. This is the purpose of univer- 
sity extension, to carry light and opportunity to 
every human being in all parts of the nation; this 



160 WISCONSIN 

is the only adequate ideal of service for the uni- 
versity." 

These activities of the university required a local 
centre. The extension and agricultural departments, 
the debating clubs, lecture courses, and travelling li- 
braries had to be housed. What more natural than 
that the school-house, the people's oldest and closest 
institution, should be used for this purpose. And 
Wisconsin, by law, has converted the public school 
into a people's club, a social centre. The last session 
of the legislature authorized city school boards to 
open the school-houses for community uses whenever 
a certain percentage of the citizens demanded it. 
The school authorities are authorized to maintain 
evening and vacation schools, reading-rooms, and 
libraries, debating clubs, gymnasiums, baths, play- 
grounds, and other activities, and to open the schools 
day and night to children and adults. If the school 
directors refuse to make provision for these things, 
ten per cent of the voters of the school district can 
demand a referendum upon it. School-houses can 
also be used as public forums for the discussion of 
non-partisan and non-sectarian questions on peti- 
tion of not less than one-half the voters of the 
district. 

The school centre idea is not new. It has been 
developed most successfully in Rochester, New York. 
Chicago has spent $11,000,000 on recreation centres 
which are all-the-year-round club-houses for the poor 



THE BRAIN OF THE COMMONWEALTH 161 

people. Nearly one hundred cities have utilized the 
school-house for social and educational purposes in 
some way or other. It remained for Wisconsin con- 
sciously to create a department in the university for 
the promotion of this idea. The state recognized 
the waste in investment with the school open but 
nine months in the year and seven hours a day; it 
recognized, too, that the school was a natural centre 
for all kinds of work, as well as for political meetings, 
for lectures, for dances, dramatic performances, and 
other activities of the neighborhood. Here minia- 
ture referendums of public opinion could be taken; 
here was a forum for public questions. The univer- 
sity sent to Rochester, New York, for Edward J. 
Ward, who had developed the school centre idea in 
that city. It placed him in charge of a department 
to promote the idea all over the state. Then the uni- 
versity proceeded to ascertain the different uses to 
which the school could be put. It called a conference 
of men and women from all over the country to dis- 
cuss the subject at Madison. Three governors, as 
many more United States senators, several univer- 
sity presidents, and a large group of editors and per- 
sons interested in public work, responded to the call. 
They outlined a programme for the widest possible 
use of the school-house for educational, recreative, 
and political purposes. Then the university issued 
bulletins containing the addresses delivered at the 
conference with directions as to how localities could 



162 WISCONSIN 

use the school-house and unite it with the welfare 
department of the university; as to how they could 
secure lecturers, extension courses, lantern slides; as 
to the organization of debating clubs to which in- 
structors would be sent by the extension department. 
Suggestions were made as to new equipment, of how 
gymnasiums, reading-rooms, branch libraries, and 
other activities could be promoted. Each school had 
within it the possibility of a university centre, of a 
people's club-house, of a democratic town meeting. 
Milwaukee organized a federation of societies to pro- 
mote the idea, and is building a new type of school- 
house, especially equipped for the purpose. 

Through the school-house the isolation of the 
farm can be relieved. Here agricultural demon- 
strations can be held; here pure seeds can be dis- 
tributed. The school-house is the natural centre 
for the country co-operative store. During the 
winter months debates, dances, and neighborhood 
gatherings can be held, while through the co-opera- 
tion of the community, the university and the state 
library can be localized in every township. The 
school-house can be made the local health office, 
with the gymnasium director as the health officer. 
Here local agencies of the state employment bureau 
can be maintained. From it pure milk can be dis- 
tributed in the cities. The school is the proper 
place for the branch library, for a reading-room, 
for the voting-booth. The opening of the school- 



THE BRAIN OF THE COMMONWEALTH 163 

house makes possible the vision of President Van 
Hise of a university which serves the people in 
every possible way, and is co-extensive with the 
needs of the state in its educational activities. 



CHAPTER XIII 
SENDING THE FARMER TO COLLEGE 

To the average farmer the state university is a 
cold-storage institution of dead languages and use- 
less learning which costs several million bushels of 
wheat each year. When he thinks of it at all, it 
is with a protest. The farmers of Wisconsin thought 
of their university as a costly, rather useless thing, 
fifteen years ago. To-day thousands of them are 
students, while thousands more are being reached 
by some one of its many activities. During the 
winter of 1912, 1,500 farmers and their wives and 
grown-up children were at Madison, studying in 
the class-rooms under professors whose advice they 
would have scorned a few years ago. Agricultural 
schools, little branches of the university, scattered 
over the state are reaching out for those who will 
not come to Madison, while demonstration stations, 
located on state and county farms, are exhibiting 
to the most sceptical the value of scientific methods 
in agriculture. Unable to win the farmer through 
traditional methods of education, the university ad- 
justed itself to his homespun prejudices. It has 
lured him by doing his work better than he does it 

164 



SENDING THE FARMER TO COLLEGE 165 

himself, by popular lectures, by illustrated bulle- 
tins, by a publicity press bureau, into an unwilling 
interest in the university and its work. 

It took the university a long time to get over its 
academic fear that the cultural departments would 
be compromised by too close association with the 
farm-yard. Back in the eighties there was a four- 
years' course in agriculture, the same as in the arts 
and sciences. But it had no students. The farmers 
looked upon it as a joke, and the university was 
rather ashamed of it. The first two }^ears were 
devoted to regular academic work, while the last 
two were given over to agriculture. None of the 
agricultural colleges had any students in these days, 
and they did not deserve any. They were thinking 
of the university, rather than of the farmer, of the 
necessity of preserving academic standards, rather 
than of promoting agricultural efficiency. 

The University of Wisconsin found difficulty in 
securing appropriations from the legislature. But 
it had two very practical men on the board of re- 
gents in Senator William F. Vilas and E. W. Keyes, 
usually known as "Boss Keyes." They sent for 
Professor William A. Henry, of the agricultural 
school, and went over the problem. They sug- 
gested that a short course be started, so arranged 
as to bring the boy to the university in the fall 
after the crops had been gathered, give him a practi- 
cal course in the things he most needed, and send 



166 WISCONSIN 

him back to the farm in the spring. Professor 
Henry thought it could not be done. The university 
had tried to reach the farmers, and had failed. In 
the second place, the suggestion was in defiance of 
academic traditions. But the regents prevailed, and 
a short course of fourteen weeks' duration, running 
through two years, was started in 1885. 

Only nineteen students came the first year, and 
twenty-five the second. It took ten years to get 
even the short course started. But in 1896 it began 
to grow. In 1910 there were 475 students spending 
their winters at Madison, while 3,547 have been 
enrolled since the course was opened twenty-five 
years ago. 

The short course is strictly practical. It is 
planned to meet the needs of young men who can- 
not afford the longer course. It aims to awaken 
the young farmer to the interesting facts of his 
work, to remove as far as possible its drudgery, and 
to give the boy an inspiration and companionship 
that will remain with him through life. Almost 
any one can register, and students come from the 
public schools with no other preliminary prepara- 
tion. The work is made as interesting as possible 
by professors who have had to learn new methods 
of teaching. The course includes the breeding of 
live-stock, their feeding, care, and management. 
The university has the best cattle, sheep, and hogs 
in the state. They are prize winners at the state 



SENDING THE FARMER TO COLLEGE 167 

fairs. And the boys study their qualities, not from 
text-books, but out on the tan bark, among the 
animals, in a big stock pavilion arranged like a 
stadium. They have printed slips, which contain 
an enumeration of the good points of a horse, cow, 
or pig, on which they check off its merits and de- 
merits. They see things in animals they never 
dreamt of before. Students learn about soils and 
their fertility, the relative value of different kinds 
of fertilizers, how to keep their farm accounts, and 
something about business. They learn about farm 
management, grains, fruit trees, and poultry; they 
are given a substantial knowledge of blacksmithing, 
carpentry, and shop work. There are lantern-slide 
lectures ;> and some simple text-books. But most 
of the work is adjusted to such experiences as the 
boys have at home. The students learn about the 
common diseases of animals, and are pretty good 
veterinarians when they get through. It is all very 
intimate, natural, and easily understood. 

There is a short course in dairying of twelve 
weeks, with courses in butter and cheese making, 
in testing milk, in dairy management. I fancy 
every one who goes through the dairy building at 
Madison and sees a hundred or more boys in white 
duck suits, or visits the stock pavilion, poultry 
sheds, and experimental farm, has a momentary 
desire to become a farmer. For agriculture is an 
alluring vocation within these environments. 



168 WISCONSIN 

The short course begins at eight in the morning, 
and continues without interruption until half-past 
three in the afternoon. Then the "Short Horns " 
have two hours' play in the gymnasium, or out in 
the open. They have a literary society of their own, 
and have organized a band and glee club. Ninety 
per cent of the graduates from this course have 
remained in agriculture, and 81 per cent are on 
Wisconsin farms. Some of them are making $5,000 
a year in the sale of pedigreed seeds. The gradu- 
ates of the short course are generally leaders in their 
communities. They set a standard for the neigh- 
borhood, and diffuse the ideas gained at the univer- 
sity among their neighbors. 

The old four-years' course, which formerly had no 
students, was vitalized by the short course, and the 
experience of the university. It, too, has grown 
very rapidly in recent years. In 1905 it had but 
80 students. In 1910 it had 364, with 32 students 
taking advanced graduate work. The number in 
the long course doubles eveiy three years. The 
technical positions in the bureaus at Washington, 
in connection with the various state universities 
and agricultural high-schools, have created a demand 
for the scientific farmer that exceeds the supply. 

The despised work of the farm-hand has become 
a lucrative vocation in Wisconsin, more lucrative 
apparently than the learned professions. When the 
university closed in 1911, the agricultural depart- 



SENDING THE FARMER TO COLLEGE 169 

merit had orders for graduates, which it could not 
supply, paying salaries which aggregated $450,000. 
These were the jobs it could not fill. The demand 
was double what it had been the year before. While 
graduates in law, medicine, engineering, arts, and 
sciences were competing for such limited oppor- 
tunities as were offered, all the " Short Horns" had 
been engaged before they completed their course 
at salaries ranging from $600 to $3,000 a year. 
Before commencement every man had found a 
position at an average salary of $1,180. Only one 
position out of seven could be filled, some of which 
paid as high as $6,000 a year. 

The success of the short course led some one 
to suggest bringing the fathers, the horny-handed 
sceptics who jeered at higher learning, to the uni- 
versity. If education was a good thing for the boys, 
why not offer it to the parents as well? This was 
another violent break with academic tradition. 
But in 1904 the university started a farmers' course 
and induced 175 farmers to come to Madison for 
ten days in the winter. By 1911 the number had 
increased to 1,305. A different course is offered 
each year, all directed to the simple problems of 
agriculture. The farmers are told how to get the 
most out of their cows, the relative value of different 
breeds, how to care for their milk, and how to organ- 
ize co-operative dairies. They learn how to judge 
cattle, horses, sheep, and pigs; they study fertil- 



170 WISCONSIN 

lizers, drainage, mechanics, gasoline engines, and 
farm buildings. Some of the farmers have returned 
to the university every winter for seven years. 
There are classes all day long, and in the evening 
as well. The course is held in February, coincident 
with the meeting of the state board of agriculture, of 
the live-stock breeders association, and the country 
life conference. 

The wives of the farmers come too. Provision 
is made for them in the school of home economics, 
in which 500 farmers wives were enrolled in 1911. 
The facilities of the school broke down, the women 
were so eager to learn about household things, about 
food adulterations, home decoration, and manage- 
ment. It was a kind of winter Chautauqua for 
them all. An intermediate course is offered to 
boys of from fourteen to seventeen years of age, 
who win the educational prizes offered by county 
fair associations for the best exhibits of corn and 
other grain. Last winter farmers came from sixty- 
two out of seventy-one counties in the state. Many 
came as sceptics. They returned converts to the 
idea. 

A school in home economics has been started in 
connection with the agricultural department. The 
course is rather severe. It extends over four years, 
and is designed to prepare the girl for home man- 
agement, along with a general education. The de- 
partment has grown with great rapidity, certain of 



SENDING THE FARMER TO COLLEGE 171 

its courses being elective to the women in other 
departments. 

But Wisconsin was not satisfied with the 1,305 
farmers who came to Madison to the farmer course. 
So it organized similar courses in connection with 
the county agricultural schools which are being 
built. Regular class-room work is given of a week's 
duration. It is under the direction of university 
professors and follows the general lines of the farmers' 
course at Madison. The total attendance at these 
farmers' courses in Madison and throughout the 
state is over 8,000. 

Through the summer farm demonstration work is 
carried on by the university at the state and county 
asylum farms. The fields selected are usually 
located close by main roads, so that the growing 
crops can be seen all through the summer. In the 
fall a picnic is held, to which the farmers come to 
observe the results of scientific farming. A row of 
pedigree corn is planted alongside of a row of com- 
mon variety. One row is properly fertilized, another 
is not. Some potatoes are sprayed, others are 
neglected. In one field the alfalfa is properly limed, 
in another is left unlimed. When the crops are 
ready to be gathered, the farmer sees in terms he 
cannot fail to understand the results of intelligent 
farming. He sees the increased yield of corn, of 
wheat, of barley, and he sees how it can be brought 
about. During the fall of 1910 over 9,000 persons 



172 WISCONSIN 

attended these farm demonstrations, or more than 
twice the number of the year before. 

In 1911 provision was made by the legislature for 
state aid to high-schools which introduced agricult- 
ural courses. By this law the state pays one-half 
the cost of the course, provided the state contribu- 
tion does not exceed $350 for each department. 
Counties are also building agricultural schools of 
their own. Milwaukee County has spent $150,000 
on such a school and La Crosse County $65,000. 
Ten of these schools were authorized by the last 
legislature, seven of which are in process of com- 
pletion. These schools offer substantially the same 
courses as the short course of the university. 

The university also goes after the youngsters. 
Seed-growing contests have been organized among 
the boys in more than half the counties of the state. 
Pedigree seeds are sent out to the school superin- 
tendents with careful instructions as to planting 
and care. The boys cultivate the seeds as directed. 
In the fall of 1910, over 6,000 exhibits were held 
by the boys at the county fairs, and over $2,000 
was distributed in prizes. The boys get astonish- 
ing results. In order to stimulate interest prizes 
are offered consisting of money enough to cover 
all the expenses of a week at Madison during the 
farmers course in the winter. In 1910, twenty-one 
boys received these prizes, and in 1911, forty of them 
came to the state university. 



SENDING THE FARMER TO COLLEGE 173 

The attitude of the farmer toward university 
appropriations has changed. The regents have 
little difficulty now. They are able to back up 
their claims with statistics of wealth production 
directly traceable to the work of the university. 
They have friends in the legislature who know from 
experience that scientific methods pay. The total 
appropriation for the university in 1900 was $550,- 
000. In 1910 it was $1,700,000. Wisconsin appro- 
priates 22 cents on every $100 of assessed valuation 
for higher education, Minnesota appropriates 11 
cents, Michigan 17 cents, and Illinois but 7 cents. 
The farmers of Wisconsin look upon the state 
university as one of the best investments they can 
make. 



CHAPTER XIV 
AN EXPERIMENT STATION IN FARM EUGENICS 

Wisconsin used to be just an ordinary grain 
growing state. The soil was being exhausted by 
repeated cropping, while the farmers were suffer- 
ing from competition with the wheat fields of the 
West. To-day Wisconsin is the second dairy state 
in the Union. In 1900 it had 988,397 head of cows. 
To-day it has 1,471,000 or an increase of 47.4 per 
cent. In 1899 the state produced 61,813,000 pounds 
of creamery butter. In 1909 it produced 105,307,- 
000 pounds, or an increase of 70.4 per cent. Dur- 
ing the same ten years the factory cheese produced 
increased from 77,748,680 pounds to 145,171,000 
pounds, or an increase of 86.7 per cent. The total 
value of the dairy products of Wisconsin in 1909 was 
$79,000,000. Incredible as it may seem, the cows 
of Wisconsin produce more wealth each year than 
the combined output of gold and silver from the 
mines of Colorado, California, and Alaska, which 
amounted in 1909 to $68,403,700. 

In 1910, Wisconsin had 1,928 out of a total of 
3,846 cheese factories in the United States, and 
1,000 creameries out of a total of 6,235. The state 

174 



FARM EUGENICS 175 

has one-half of all the cheese factories and about 
one-sixth of the creameries of the nation. Between 
1900 and 1910 the cow population remained sta- 
tionary in New York and Iowa, the other two lead- 
ing dairy states, while it increased about 50 per 
cent in Wisconsin. 

The cow is one of the many by-products of higher 
education in Wisconsin. For the university saved 
the dairy industry and brought it to a high state 
of efficiency. It claims, and the farmers acquiesce 
in the claim, that any one of a half dozen discoveries 
made at the university pays the total appropriation 
for the support of higher education each year. The 
agricultural college is a laboratory of everything 
pertaining to farming. It studies different breeds 
of cattle and ascertains by scientific tests which are 
the best milk, butter, or cheese producers. It experi- 
ments with feeds and methods of care. It is stamp- 
ing out oat smut and bovine tuberculosis. It 
scraps old ideas and invents new ones, just as does 
an up-to-date factory. A simple milk test, dis- 
covered by Professor Babcock in 1890, and known 
as the Babcock milk test, saved the co-operative 
dairy industry by making it possible to determine 
by simple analysis the amount of butter fat that 
milk contains. Now milk is sold under a chemical 
analysis of its actual butter or cheese value. It is 
no longer profitable to sell skimmed or watered 
milk to the dairy. Farmers now breed cows with 



176 WISCONSIN 

the results of this test in view. Wisconsin men 
also invented the Hart casein test, the moisture 
test for butter, the curd test for cheese, the King 
system for ventilation, a milk sediment test, and 
other mechanical devices for the dairy. The uni- 
versity has a short course in dairying which trains 
young men and women to butter and cheese making, 
in dairy management, and economies. Wisconsin 
is rapidly becoming the Denmark of America. 

The university has herds of Holsteins, Guernseys, 
and Jerseys that are prize winners in the state fairs. 
It knows to a nicety their value as wealth producers. 
It maintains a publicity department, and keeps the 
farmers , advised of its researches and discoveries. 
The university conducts tests each month with 
prizes for the best milk productions. There are 
monthly scoring exhibitions for improving the qual- 
ity of butter and cheese, to which the dairies send 
samples of their output. It is like a county fair run- 
ning every week in the year. In 1900, the university 
sent out 50,000 letters to farmers in answer to in- 
quiries. It gave 100 lectures to farmers' organiza- 
tions, supplied 400 weekly newspapers with press 
service, and distributed 43 bulletins with a total of 
969 pages. It sends out blue-prints so that farmers 
can erect their own farm buildings, silos, and venti- 
lators according to the most approved methods. 

The state is dotted with community cattle breed- 
ers associations, organized to improve the quality of 



FARM EUGENICS 177 

cattle. These, too, were promoted by the university 
and include over 1,000 farmers. It costs no more, the 
university says, to raise a two-hundred-dollar cow 
than a forty-dollar one. Each county association is 
encouraged to select a certain breed, Guernsey, Jer- 
sey, or Holstein, and to gradually weed out all other 
cattle. By this plan the county establishes a reputa- 
tion as a breeding centre. It becomes known through- 
out the country, while the farmers are able to co- 
operate to improve and maintain the standards of 
their herds. 

This idea was started in 1906. In four years 7 time 
thirty-seven county associations had been formed for 
breeding special kinds of cattle. Buyers now come 
to Wisconsin from all over the country. They can 
purchase carloads of selected animals without leaving 
a county. Holsteins worth $175,000 went out of 
Lake Mills in 1910, while Jefferson County sold 
$750,000 worth of dairy cattle. Two hundred head 
of Holsteins were shipped to California from one 
county. Waukesha County is known as the Guern- 
sey centre of America. Its association started with 
a membership of ten farmers in 1906. It now enrolls 
one hundred farmers who own 1,000 head of pure 
bred animals. In the majority of these associations, 
the herds are tuberculin tested, while the members 
co-operate to study and improve the quality of their 
stock. The associations advertise in the dairy papers 
and purchase the best variety of breeding males. 



178 WISCONSIN 

By these means Wisconsin has become a market for 
high grade cattle. It cannot supply the demand. 

Along with a knowledge of Greek and Latin roots, 
the university is creating an agricultural culture, a 
desire for the best, and a pride in farming like that 
of any other profession. It is producing thorough- 
bred cattle, horses, and pigs. It is even producing 
thoroughbred corn, wheat, and barley; and by so 
doing is greatly increasing the crops. It is making 
the state rich, and the farmers appreciate it. The 
results of the Babcock milk test pay the cost to 
the university many times over. So do the means 
devised for the elimination of oat smut. The in- 
crease in the yield of corn, barley, and other prod- 
ucts due to seed culture runs into the millions 
each year. It is claimed that the total profit di- 
rectly traceable to ideas introduced by the university 
exceeds $20,000,000 a year. Some time ago Professor 
Moore began to experiment with grains. By a proc- 
ess of selection, he produced big full ears with large 
kernels of corn, wheat, and barley, which, after care- 
ful planting on the university farm, are distributed 
throughout the state. To-day Wisconsin produces 
enough pure breed barley to seed all the barley fields 
in the United States. The yield of pedigreed oats 
on the university farm in 1911 was seventy-six bushels 
to the acre. 

Having convinced itself of the possibility of seed 
eugenics, it was necessary to convince the state. 



FARM EUGENICS 179 

The university organized the Wisconsin Experiment 
Association from among the graduates of the agri- 
cultural department, which has a present member- 
ship of over 1,500. The association is a kind of 
alumni club, as well as a clearing-house of information 
about what its members are doing. Membership 
carries with it the pamphlets and publications of the 
university, as well as an allotment of selected pedi- 
gree grain. The first year the farmer grows his 
seed corn or barley for culture, but by the second 
season he is able to market his seed at good prices. 
One member in Dodge County reported sales of 
pedigree seeds amounting to $15,000 in one season. 
A half-dozen men are making more money out of 
seed culture than is paid any professor at the uni- 
versity. Orders come to the university from China, 
Japan, Mexico, from all over the world in fact. These 
orders are turned over to members of the experiment 
association to supply. It is estimated that $300,000 
worth of selected seeds have been sold in one year 
in addition to the greatly increased value of the local 
product. 

The state was becoming the Denmark of America 
in the dairy industry, the Island of Guernsey and 
the home of the Jersey and the Holstein in cattle 
breeding; why should it not be made the home of 
the Percheron, the Norman, and the thoroughbred 
in the manual of the horse breeder as well. Wiscon- 
sin horses had the reputation among buyers of being 



180 WISCONSIN 

scrubs. They lacked character and breed. So the 
theorists at the university looked up the practice in 
other countries and found that the celebrated draught 
horses of Belgium were bred from selected sires, sub- 
sidized by the government and officially examined 
and approved for service. Only pure bred stallions 
are in use. The French government has maintained 
stables of carefully selected stallions for over a hun- 
dred years, and horses failing to come within the 
specified classes have been excluded from service. A 
subsidy is paid the owners of from $60 to $100 a year 
to keep high grade stallions in the country. In Ger- 
many it is provided by law "that no permits shall be 
issued authorizing the use of stallions, unless they 
have passed a satisfactory government inspection. 77 
Then the university sent out bulletins to the 
farmers telling of the folly of raising mongrel horses; 
of the advantage of improving the stock just as was 
done in the cattle business. It encouraged the for- 
mation of county associations in connection with 
the department of horse breeding in the university. 
Then by that intelligent indirection, that acts 
through suggestion rather than by compulsion, the 
university secured the passage of a law in 1906 by 
which owners of stallions are compelled to register 
them as " mongrels," "grades," or "thoroughbreds/ 7 
and post the license in a conspicuous place so that 
the farmer will not be deceived and will be induced 
by pride to select a blooded sire for his colts. Since 



FARM EUGENICS 181 

the passage of the law the number of "grade" or 
" mixed breed" stallions has decreased fifteen per 
cent, while 1,226 "grade" and "mongrel" stallions 
have been retired from service. The value of horses 
has increased very rapidly while the pure bred stall- 
ions are crowding out the mongrel. 

These activities of the university are enriching the 
state. The average yield of corn in the United 
States is 25 bushels to the acre, while in Wisconsin 
the average yield is 36 bushels. Pure pedigree corn 
runs as high as 100 bushels to the acre, or four times 
the average yield of the country. Corn has been de- 
veloped suited to the northern tier of counties where 
its cultivation has never been profitable. Varieties 
of alfalfa have been bred and demonstrations made 
of the profitableness of sugar beet culture. The 1,540 
members of the experiment association, using pedi- 
greed "Silver King" corn, raised in a five-year test 
an average of 61 bushels of shelled corn to the acre, 
as against an average of the best competing variety 
of only 49 bushels. This was an increase of 25 per 
cent in the crop. The yield of barley has been raised 
to 54 bushels an acre, while the average yield secured 
by 1,020 members of the association in five-year tests 
was 35.7 bushels per acre, as against 30.8 bushels of 
other varieties. During these years the average 
yield of barley for the entire state was 28.3 bushels, 
as against 25.6 bushels for the United States. The 
use of pedigreed barley has spread so widely that 75 



182 WISCONSIN 

per cent of the entire crop of Wisconsin is of this va- 
riety. Wisconsin is demonstrating that any appre- 
hensions as to the shortage of food supply are ground- 
less for many years to come at least, for we have only 
begun to touch the possibilities of agriculture and 
have scarcely experimented with intensive farming. 
The university is an experiment station in farm 
eugenics. It is applying biology and the teachings 
of evolution to agriculture. Men breed horses and 
dogs for sport, why not breed cattle, pigs, chickens, 
wheat, and barley for profit? Why not convert 
every farm into a laboratory, and every farmer into 
a scientist, and thus lift farm work out of its dull mo- 
notony into a co-operative group life animated by 
pride in the craft. All this seems possible from what 
has already been done. The cattle, horse breeding, 
and seed growing associations, the dairy and cheese 
testing contests, are awakening a pride in the farmer. 
His work has taken on dignity. And underneath the 
material gains, new ideals of social service and the 
possibilities of country life are awakening. There is 
a willingness to organize, to co-operate, an apprecia- 
tion of the value of science and education, as well as 
a growing desire for the more cultural opportuni- 
ties which the university offers. The ambitions and 
group spirit which the university has aroused are 
scarcely less remarkable than the material gains 
which have come to the state. 



CHAPTER XV 
CONCLUSION 

What is the explanation of Wisconsin? Why- 
has it been able to eliminate corruption , machine 
politics, and rid itself of the boss? What is the 
cause of the efficiency, the thoroughness, the desire 
to serve which animates the state? Why has Wis- 
consin succeeded where other states have uniformly 
failed? 

I think the explanation is simple. It is also 
perfectly natural. It is traceable to democracy, to 
the political freedom which had its beginning in the 
direct primary law, and which has been continuously 
strengthened by later laws. Without it the subse- 
quent achievements of the state would have been 
impossible. Possibly its framers only saw a weapon 
with which the people could do battle on equal 
terms; possibly they were only interested in estab- 
lishing popular sovereignty. Certainly no one could 
have anticipated the psychological change which fol- 
lowed the primary; not in Wisconsin alone, but in 
the nation as well. 

We have been taught to believe that the trouble 
with our politics is traceable to our people, to politi- 

183 



184 WISCONSIN 

cal indolence, to our absorption in money getting, 
to extreme partisanship. These are the causes 
usually assigned for our failures. We have assumed 
that our evils are personal, ethical, in some wa}^ 
traceable to the political incapacity of our people. 
I do not believe this is true. I know of no country 
where politics occupies so absorbing a place in the 
press, in the public mind, or in the discussions of 
so many people as it does in America. I doubt if 
voters are any more partisan than they are in Ger- 
many or England, or that business interests are 
any more influential in determining our political 
affiliations than in foreign countries. 

I believe we are the wisest people, politically, in 
the world; I believe we know more about the wrongs 
of politics than do the voters of any country. And 
I think we are individually as intolerant of abuses. 

The explanation of our cities and states is not 
personal or ethical at all. It is institutional and 
economic. We have made representative govern- 
ment almost impossible by the complicated machin- 
ery of nominations and elections, by the distribution 
of powers and responsibility among so many officials, 
by the rigidity of our written constitutions. In 
addition, we have lured business into politics by 
privileges of colossal value. We have minimized 
the sovereignty of the community and exalted the 
sovereignty of private property. So many public 
functions have been entrusted to private hands 



CONCLUSION 185 

that we have aligned the wealth, the power, and 
the talent of the community against the govern- 
ment. 

In the years which followed the Civil War privilege 
was invited into the government by tariff favors, 
by land grants to the Pacific railways, by the close 
identification of the treasury department with the 
financial powers of the country. These interests 
extended their control into the states. They be- 
came identified with the franchise corporations of 
the cities, with the railway and public service cor- 
porations, seeking privileges from the state. They 
seized hold of the machinery of government. They 
devised every possible indirection to confuse the 
voter. They perfected the caucus and the con- 
vention system. They opposed the Australian 
ballot. They increased the number of elective 
officials, so that intelligent voting was almost impos- 
sible. They enacted laws against independent nomi- 
nations, to protect the bi-partisan machine. They 
imposed unworkable charters on our cities, with 
responsibility so widely distributed as to render 
effective protest almost impossible. No country 
in the western world has invited corruption by 
special privilege, as has America. In no country 
is the machinery of government so complex in its 
provisions or so intricate in its workings. State 
and federal constitutions add to the difficulty. 
They increase the apathy of the people. They have 



186 WISCONSIN 

been a citadel of strength to privileged interests, 
which find protection under their inelastic rigidity. 
The psychological effect of an inflexible constitu- 
tion is to discourage initiative. It atrophies effort. 
It prevents orderly evolution and growth. 

We can only see the extent to which our politics 
are poisoned by special privilege by comparing one 
state with another. For privilege not only serves 
itself, it corrodes every other department of govern- 
ment as well. Of necessity it has to deal with the 
boss. It has to ally itself with vice. The schools 
are sacrificed to its greed. The university becomes 
its prey. Of necessity privilege ramifies into every 
fibre of the community. We can see the costs of 
special privilege in Pennsylvania or New York. It 
extends to the cities, to the mining districts, to the 
steel mills, and factory towns; we see it in Illinois, 
in Chicago, in Cincinnati, wherever privilege rules 
it sacrifices of necessity not only the departments 
which it needs, but every other activity of city and 
state as well. 

This was so in Wisconsin as long as the convention 
system with its series of irresponsible intermediaries 
between the people and their representatives pre- 
vailed. Ideals and talents were chained by fear. 
The energy of the state was absorbed in defence, 
in keeping what it had gained rather than in building 
for the future. 

Wisconsin assumed that the trouble with our 



CONCLUSION 187 

politics is not with our people, but with the machin- 
ery with which the people work. And Wisconsin 
has taken the kinks, the angles, the circumlocution 
out of government. It has established a line of 
vision as direct as possible between the people and 
the expression of their will. Officials have become 
agents or servants, rather than principals or bosses. 
They are free to serve without fear or favor of those 
who contribute to campaign funds or of the boss 
who barters in legislation and keeps his retainers 
in office as long as they are obedient to his will. 

The achievements of Wisconsin came through 
freedom, through freedom in thought as well as in 
action. There was an end of fear. Men dared 
stand for ideas. Freedom of speech and of research 
were preserved in the university. The by-products 
of political freedom were greater than the direct 
political gains which followed. 

Political freedom made other reforms possible. 
No constructive programme can be developed in 
the midst of a class conflict. It can be achieved by 
a benevolent autocrat, as in Germany, or it can be 
achieved by democracy. There is no place for 
state building in the midst of a struggle between 
privilege and democracy. Men's minds are ab- 
sorbed in warfare, not in state building. And in 
Wisconsin so long as men feared that new ideas 
would imperil their place or advancement, pro- 
gressive legislation was out of the question. The 



188 WISCONSIN 

press was influenced by its owners. It reflected 
the will of the ruling class. The university was 
subject to the same fear. Academic freedom was 
under espionage. Professors were restless. They 
feared some chance expression would endanger their 
posts. The extension of university teaching carried 
with it the germs of danger to the old system. It 
promoted discussion. It awakened the interest of 
the people. 

It is impossible to measure the psychological 
effect of freedom on the mind of a state. It is 
obvious, however, that Wisconsin could not have 
entered on its policy of corporation control under 
the old system. It is equally obvious that the far- 
reaching industrial programme of workmen's com- 
pensation and state insurance, would have been 
well-nigh impossible. A widening of political power 
carried with it a widening of the idea of political 
service. Equal opportunity for all, rather than 
special privileges for the few, became the motive 
of legislation. 

The biological laws that control the animal king- 
dom apply to the development of society as well. 
Evolution demands a free field. Progress comes 
with equal opportunity for talent to find expression. 
Democracy insures such opportunity. It offers a 
field of agitation, of discussion that is not possible 
when the channels of political action are closed. 
The achievements of Wisconsin are achievements 



CONCLUSION 189 

of democrac}\ Through it the aspirations of the 
state have found expression. 

Wisconsin is fortunate in the close identity of 
the university with the state-house. The reaction 
of one upon the other has been beneficial to both. 
The university has been invigorated by its contact 
with practical problems. Young men have been 
awakened to an interest in politics. Teaching has 
been vitalized by the large number of professors, 
who give a portion of their time to state affairs, 
to the solution of administrative, legislative, and 
technical problems. The pioneer work of the state 
is largely traceable to the bigness of vision that the 
university has brought to legislation. Laws have 
been framed with the experience of the world before 
the legislature. Thoroughness has characterized the 
laws which Wisconsin has placed on the statute books. 

Scientific efficiency is one of the university's con- 
tributions to the state, and efficiency is one of Wis- 
consin's contributions to democracy. It has been 
carried into almost every department of the com- 
monwealth. 

The assumption is not uncommon that democracy 
involves the commonplace, that it means a levelling 
down, a cheapening, an intolerance of superiority. 
It is suggested that the people will not stand for 
generous expenditures, for big ideals. Wisconsin 
proves the contrary. In ten years' time the annual 
appropriations for the university have increased 



190 WISCONSIN 

from $550,000 to $1,700,000. A splendid state- 
house, costing $6,000,000, is being erected. In- 
creased provision is being made for new types of 
normal, agricultural, manual training, and technical 
schools for the promotion of vocational and exten- 
sion work. Generous salaries are paid the appoint- 
ive positions to which the expert is selected, irre- 
spective of his political affiliations. 

Democracy not only produced the expert, it ele- 
vated him to office. It recognized the necessity of 
research, of training, of science, in the highly com- 
plex business of government. One of the first acts 
of the Socialist administration in Milwaukee was 
the organization of a bureau of economy and ef- 
ficiency to aid its officials in their work. It sent 
to the university for an instructor to train its 
aldermen in problems of city administration. The 
legislative reference bureau, the railroad commis- 
sion, the board of public affairs, the industrial com- 
mission, are all filled with experts or professors 
from the university. Forestry, agriculture, and road 
building have been recognized as requiring the aid 
of the scientist. 

Democracy, too, began to use its powers to serve, 
to serve people as well as business, to serve humanity 
as well as property. Democracy has begun a war on 
poverty, on ignorance, on disease, on human waste. 
The state is using its collective will to promote a 
programme of human welfare. 



CONCLUSION 191 

Wisconsin is dispelling the fears of those who 
distrusted democracy. It is demonstrating the 
possibility of using the state as an instrument for 
the well-being of all people. It is laying the founda- 
tions for a commonwealth whose ideal it is to serve. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY OF IMPORTANT LAWS 
AND LITERATURE ON WISCONSIN 

AGENCIES OF POLITICAL EFFICIENCY 

Board of Public Affairs, Law for. See Session Laws, 1911. 

Bureau of Economy and Efficiency, Milwaukee, Reports of. 

Civil Service Laws, for State and Municipal Officials. Re- 
vised Statutes. 

Legislative Reference Department. Circular of Informa- 
tion No. 6, Free Library Commission. 

Municipal Reference Bureau. Bulletin University of Wis- 
consin. 

Uniform Accounting Law for Counties, Cities, etc. See 
Session Laws, 1911. 

AGRICULTURE 

Bulletins of Agricultural Experiment Station. Madison, 
Wis. 

College Extensions in Agriculture. Bulletin U. S. Depart- 
ment of Agriculture, Washington. 

Schools of, and Domestic Economy, to be Established by 
Counties, Law for. See Session Laws, 1911. 

CITIES 

Home Rule Charter Conventions for Cities, Law for. See 
Session Laws, 1911. 

Initiative and Referendum for Cities, Law for. See Session 
Laws, 1911. 

Milwaukee. Report of Bureau of Economy and Efficiency, 
Milwaukee, Wis. 

Municipal Reference Bureau, Bulletins Relating to. Uni- 
versity of Wisconsin. 

193 



194 BIBLIOGRAPHY 



EDUCATION 

Compilation of Laws Relating to Common Schools, High 
Schools, Normal Schools, County Training Schools, 
County Agricultural Schools, State Graded Schools, 
and the State University. Compiled by State Super- 
intendent, 1911. 

Compulsory School Attendance, Truancy, and Continuation 
Schools. Bulletin of Industrial Commission. 

Continuation Schools, Law for. See Session Laws, 1911. 

Manual Training, Departments of, in High Schools, Law for. 
See Session Laws, 1911. 

School Buildings, Use of, for Evening Classes, Gymnasiums, 
for Public Meetings, etc. See Session Laws, 1911. 

Schools of Agriculture and Domestic Ecomony, to be Estab- 
lished by Counties. See Session Laws, 1911. 

The School-house as a Social or Recreation Centre. Bulle- 
tins of the University. 

Travelling Library in Wisconsin. Bulletin Wisconsin Free 
Library Commission. 

University Extension. Bulletins of the University on Vari- 
ous Subjects. 

ELECTIONS 

Anti-Lobby Bill. See Revised Statutes. 

Ballot, Separate Ballots for National, State, and Local Elec- 
tions. See Session Laws, 1911. 

Corrupt Practices at Elections, Law to Control. See Ses- 
sion Laws, 1911. 

Primaries, Law Governing the Same, with Provisions for 
Second Choice, Nomination of United States Senators, 
and President and Vice-President. Special Pamphlet 
or Revised Statutes. 

Woman Suffrage, Resolution to Submit to People. See 
Session Laws, 1911. 



FORESTRY 

Annual Reports of State Forester. 

Storage Reservoirs. 

Study of Wisconsin Wood-Using Industries. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 195 

Taxation of Forest Lands in Wisconsin. 

The above are published by the Wisconsin State Board 
of Forestry. 

INDUSTRIAL AND FACTORY LEGISLATION 

Borgniss vs. The Falk Co. Opinion of Courts Sustaining 
Industrial Legislation. Industrial Commission. 

Child Labor Laws. See Session Laws, 1911. 

Continuation Schools. See Session Laws, 1911. 

Health and Safety of Employees, Laws Relating to. In- 
dustrial Commission. 

Industrial Commission, Law for. See Session Laws, 1911. 

Organization of Mutual Employers' Liability Insurance 
Companies. Provisions of Law. Industrial Com- 
mission. 

Rules for Safeguarding Workmen in Factories. Industrial 
Commission. 

Woman Labor, Laws Regulating. See Session Laws, 1911. 

Women's Hours of Labor. Opinions of Courts and Experts, 
and Summary of Wisconsin Law. Industrial Com- 
mission. 

Workmen's Compensation Act, with Notes of Legislative 
Committee and Forms and Rules of Industrial Com- 
mission. Industrial Commission. 



INSURANCE 

Organization of Mutual Companies for the Insurance of 
Bank Depositors. See Session Laws, 1911. 

Organization of Mutual Employers' Liability Insurance 
Companies. See Session Laws, 1911. 

State Life Fund, and Fraternal Insurance Companies. Re- 
port of Commissioner of Insurance, 1911. 



RAILWAYS AND PUBLIC UTILITY CORPORATIONS 

Certain Important Provisions of the Public Utilities Law 
of Wisconsin. Address before Trans-Mississippi Com- 
mercial Congress, Kansas City, 1911, by John H. 
Roemer. 



196 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Law Governing Water-Powers in State and Placing Same 
Under Railway Commission. See Session Laws, 1911. 
Declared Unconstitutional, 1912. 

Law Providing for Railway and Public Utility Commission. 
See Revised Statutes. 

Some Features of State Regulations of Public Utilities. 
Address before Wisconsin State Bar Association at 
Milwaukee, September, 1909, by John H. Roemer. 

The Causes and Effects of a Public Utility Commission. 
Address Delivered before the Illinois Gas Associa- 
tion by John H. Roemer, 1911. 

Wisconsin Public Utilities Law. Three Addresses by B. H. 
Meyer. 

TAXATION 

Act to Provide for the Taxation of Steam Railroads and 
Other Public Utility Corporations. Revised Statutes. 
Annual Reports of the Tax Commission. 
Income Tax Law of 1911. See Session Laws, 1911. 
Income Tax Law and Interpretation. Tax Commission. 
Inheritance Tax Laws of Wisconsin, Compiled. Tax Com- 
mission. 
The Session Laws of Wisconsin, as well as many of the 
above publications, can be secured from the Superintendent 
of Public Property, Madison, Wisconsin, on payment of a 
nominal charge for the same. Other publications can be 
secured from the various commissions, boards, or depart- 
ments of the University. 



INDEX 



Academic freedom, p. 31 

Accidents, Extent and cost of, 
p. 89. 

Agriculture, College of, pp. 164- 
182; a lucrative profession, 
p. 169; efficiency of, promoted 
by University, p. 178; ex- 
periment association, p. 179; 
country schools, 171. (See 
Farmers and University.) 

Annuities, Life provision for, in 
Wisconsin, p. 120 

Anti-Lobby law, p. 27. 

Appropriations, for extension 
work, p. 148; for University, 
p. 173 



B 



Babcock milk test, p. 175 

Ballot reform, p. 56 

Bank deposits, Insurance of, 
p. 122; failures, p. 33 

Board of Public Affairs created, 
p. 126; a clearing-house of in- 
formation, p. 127; powers of, 
127 ; policy as to swamp lands, 
p. 129; possibilities of, p. 130. 

Business conditions in Wiscon- 
sin, p. 33 



City charters, how adopted un- 
der home-rule law, p. 64 

Civil service reform, p. 29 

Commercial colleges in Ger- 
many, p. 39 

Commissions, Effect of, on legis- 
lature, p. 28 

Common law, Effect of, on in- 
dustry, p. 68; evolution of, 
p. 86 

Commons, John R., pp. 48, 105, 
111 

Compensation for workmen, See 
Industrial Commission and 
p. 95 

Competition of public utility 
corporations, Provisions 
against, p. 82 

Continuation schools in Wiscon- 
sin, p. 113 

Convention system, Methods of, 
p. 13 

Corn, Increase in production of, 
p. 181 

Correspondence courses in edu- 
cation, p. 144 

Corrupt practices act, p. 54 

Corruption, Removal of, from 
legislature, p. 15; checked by 
public utility law, p. 81 

County agricultural schools, p. 
171 



Campaigning, La Follette's meth- 
ods, p. 17 

Child labor laws, p. 112 

Cities, Limitations on, in Wis- 
consin, p. 64 



Dairy course in University, 
p. 167 

Dairying, Growth of, in Wiscon- 
sin, p. 174 

Debating and Discussion, De- 
partment of, p. 156 



197 



198 



INDEX 



Democracy, Achievements and 
ideals of, p. 190; widening of, 
in Wisconsin, p. 59; explains 
progress of Wisconsin, p. 190; 
foundation of, in state, p. 26 

Direct primaries, Genesis of, 
p. 13; effect of, on country, 
p. 18; defects of Wisconsin 
law, p. 26; effect of, on state, 
p. 27; results from, p. 51; 
provisions of Wisconsin law, 
p. 52; for United States Sena- 
tor, p. 53; for second choice, 
p. 53; presidential nomina- 
tions, p. 58; explains progress 
of Wisconsin, p. 185; effect 
on other branches of state, 
p. 187 



E 



Economy and Efficiency, Bu- 
reau of, in Milwaukee, p. 48 

Education, Evolution of higher, 
in America, p. 140 

Efficiency in public utility cor- 
porations, p. 76 

Ekern, Herman L., pp. 118, 121 

Employment bureaus, state, p. 
114 

Eugenics, Farm, in Wisconsin, 
p. 182 

European countries, Ownership 
of railways and public service 
corporations in, p. 84 

Extension, University. (See 
University extension.) 



F 



Factory legislation, Cause of, 
failure in America, p. 106 

Factory mutual fire insurance 
companies, p. 123 

Farm demonstrations, p. 171 

Farm eugenics, p. 182 

Farmers, Attitude of, toward 
University, p. 164; special 



courses in University, p. 164; 
special courses, p. 169. (See 
Agriculture and University.) 

Federal and state machines, 
p. 14 

Fellow-servant rule, Origin of, 
p. 87; cost to society, p. 89; 
rule abolished as defence, 
p. 94. (See Industry and In- 
dustrial Commission.) 

Fellowships in University in 
practical politics, p. 43 

Fire insurance provided by 
state, p. 119 

Forestry in Wisconsin, p. 130 

Freedom, Effect of, on thought, 
p. 187; necessity for, 187; 
Declaration for University 
freedom in state platform, 
p. 35 



German city, Freedom of, p. 63 
Germany identifies science with 
pohtics, p. 38; industrial in- 
surance in, p. 99 

H 

Haugen, Nils P., p. 12 

Hepburn Rate bill, La Follette's 
work on, p. 21 

Home economics, School of, p. 
170 

Home rule, Need of, in cities, 
p. 64 

Horse-breeding methods em- 
ployed in foreign countries and 
in Wisconsin, p. 180 



Ideals of farming in Wisconsin, 

p. 182 
Income tax law, pp. 42, 137 
Increase in pure-bred horses, 

p. 181 



INDEX 



199 



Indeterminate permits of public 
utility corporations, p. 71 

Indian Territory, Railroads at- 
tempts to secure lands in, 
p. 20 

Industrial Commission, Provi- 
sions for, p. 98; its purpose, 
p. 104; powers of board, p. 
105; factory legislation, why 
failed in other states, p. 106; 
European legislative methods, 
p. 108; new idea in American 
industrial legislation, p. 109; 
safety in industry, p. 110; 
Commons, John R., comments 
on new law, p. Ill 

Industrial insurance, in Europe, 
p. 93; in Wisconsin, p. 100 

Industrial legislation, Special leg- 
islative committee on, p. 92 

Industry, Helplessness of worker 
in modern, p. 116 

Information and Welfare De- 
partment of University, p. 153 

Inheritance tax law, p. 136 

Initiative and Referendum, how 
studied, p. 42; in Wisconsin, 
p. 59; in other states, p. 60; 
Wisconsin plan, p. 61; ex- 
tended to cities, p. 65 

Insurance, Possibilities of, p. 
118; state life insurance, p. 
119; state fire insurance, p. 
119; state life fund, p. 120; 
of bank deposits, p. 122; 
attitude of states toward, p. 
124 

Investors protected by utility 
commission, p. 82 



Labor legislation, Attitude of 
Wisconsin, p. 115 

La Follette, entrance into poli- 
tics, p. 4; as district attor- 
ney, p. 6; candidate for con- 



gress, p. 6; the man, p. 7; 
early experiences in congress, 
p. 7; land grabbers in con- 
gress, p. 7; experiences with 
Senator Sawyer, p. 8; rail- 
road land grants, p. 8; final 
defeat for congress, p. 9; as a 
lawyer, p. 10; suits against the 
state treasurers of Wisconsin, 
p. 10; the Sawyer incident, p. 
10; as a campaigner, p. 11; 
the beginning of the eight 
years' war, p. 11; first can- 
didacy for governor, p. 12; 
purchase of delegates, p. 13; 
genesis of the primary law, 
p. 13; third gubernatorial 
campaign, p. 14; machine ac- 
cepts platform, p. 14; elected 
governor, p. 14; defeat of his 
measures, p. 14; sickness, p. 
15; newspaper control, p. 15; 
attitude of business interests, 
p. 15; enactment of primary 
and taxation bills, p. 16; birth 
of railway commission idea, p. 
16; elected governor for third 
time, p. 17; chosen to United 
States Senate, p. 17; as a 
builder, p. 17; effect of pri- 
mary law, p. 18; education 
of state, p. 18; railway valu- 
ation, p. 19; effect on busi- 
ness, p. 19; experience in 
senate, p. 19; educational in- 
stitutions, Wisconsin, p. 20; 
Indian land bill, p. 20; Hep- 
burn rate bill, p. 21; alone in 
senate, p. 22; limitation hours 
railway employees, p. 22; 
postal appropriation bill, p. 
22; Payne- Aldrich tariff bill, 
p. 23; democracy of, p. 23; 
re-elected to senate, p. 36 
Land grabbers in congress, p. 7 
Lecture Courses, Popular, De- 
partment of, in University, p. 
155 



200 



INDEX 



Legal obstacles to industrial 
legislation, p. 100 

Legislative methods in Wiscon- 
sin, p. 92; procedure in for- 
eign countries, p. 108 

Legislative Reference Bureau, p. 
46 

Licensing law for horses, p. 
180 

Life annuity, Provision for, p. 
120 

Limitation of hours of labor, of 
railway employees, p. 22; of 
children, p. 112; of women, 
p. 112. 

Limitation of use of money in 
elections, p. 54 

Litigation, Cost of, to workmen, 
p. 97 

Lobby, Changed character of, 
in Wisconsin, p. 27 



M 

"""""McCarthy, Charles, p. 46 
McGovern, Francis E., p. 34 
Municipal home rule, p. 64; 
absence of, one of the explana- 
tions of the American city, 
p. 62 
Municipal Reference Bureau p. 

54 
Municipal water plants under 
jurisdiction of utility commis- 
sion, p. 79 
Municipalities in Wisconsin, State 
limitations on powers of, p. 
64 
Mutual industrial insurance 
companies, Provisions for, p. 
100 



Oregon, Origin presidential pri- 
mary law, p. 56; initiative and 
referendum in, p. 60 



Package libraries, p. 158 

Payne, Henry C, p. 8 

Pedigree seeds, Sales of, p. 179 

Platforms prepared by candi- 
dates, p. 52 

Political conditions in America, 
traceable to privileged inter- 
ests, p. 185 

Presidential primaries, p. 56 

Press, Venality of, p. 15 

Priestly vs. Fowler, p. 87 

Primaries. ( See Direct prima- 
ries.) 

Privileged interest in Wisconsin, 
p. 3; attitude of, p. 25; in 
United States, p. 185; last 
stand in Wisconsin, p. 34 . 

Professors, Activity of, in poli- 
tics, p. 40 

Prosperity in Wisconsin, Effect 
of railroad control on, p. 74 

Public affairs, Board of, p. 126 

Public Library, Evolution of, 
p. 148 

Public officials, Attitude of, in 
Wisconsin, p. 50 

Public ownership compared with 
regulation, p. 83 

Public utility corporations. (See 
Railway Commission) 



R 

Railroads, land grants in Con- 
gress, p. 8; taxation, attitude 
of railroads to, in Wiscon- 
sin, p. 16; commission bill, p. 
16; physical valuation of, p. 
19; railway mail pay, p. 22; 
hours of labor of employees, 
p. 22; railroad and public 
service corporation lobby, p. 
28; railway commission, p. 67; 
methods employed by, p. 67; 
valuation of railways, p. 68; 
complaints, how made, p. 68; 



INDEX 



201 



power of courts limited, p. 69; 
rebates and discriminations 
prohibited, p. 70; character 
of commission, p. 71; inde- 
terminate permit, p. 71; re- 
bates and discriminations, ex- 
tent of, p. 72; freight rates, 
reduction of, p. 74; railway- 
building and earnings, increase 
of, p. 74; free passes, abolition 
of, p. 74; improvement of 
service, p. 74; standardization 
of accounts, p. 75; engineer- 
ing staff of, p. 77; efficiency in- 
creased by commission, p. 77; 
rate regulation, an accurate 
proceeding, p. 78; methods of 
accounting, p. 78; municipal 
plants, subject to control, 
p. 79; alternative to public 
ownership, p. 80; criticisms of 
commission, p. 80; achieve- 
ments, p. 81; effect on cor- 
ruption and political activity 
of corporations, p. 81 ; invest- 
ors protected, p. 82; public 
ownership, alternative to reg- 
ulation, p. 83; public owner- 
ship in other countries, p. 83; 
taxation of, in Wisconsin p. 
133 

Rebates, Extent of, in Wiscon- 
sin, p. 72 

Reber, Louis J., pp. 144, 147 

Recall of officials, p. 62 

Recreation centres, p. 160 

Roe, Gilbert E., p. 88 

Roman history, Method of teach- 
ing, p. 44 

Ross, E. A., p. 45 



Science and politics, close union 
in Germany, p. 38; in Wis- 
consin, p. 39 

Scientific agriculture in Wiscon- 
sin, p. 168 

Seed-growing contests, p. 172 

Service, Spirit of, in Wisconsin, 
p. 41 

Short course in agriculture, p. 
166 

Socialist administration in Mil- 
waukee, organizes bureau of 
economy and efficiency, p. 
48; relation to university, p. 
155 

Spoils system, Termination of, 
pp. 19, 29 

Stallions, Licensing of, p. 180 

Standardization of accounts of 
public service corporations, p. 
75 

Swamp lands in Wisconsin, p. 
129 



Tax commission of Wisconsin, 
p. 133 

Taxation, increased revenues 
from railways, p. 32; reason 
for defects in state, p. 133; 
railways escape taxes in Wis- 
consin, p. 133; increase in 
their taxes, p. 134; inheri- 
tance tax law, p. 136; equali- 
zation of local values, p. 136; 
income tax law and its pro- 
vision, p. 137; motive of tax 
reforms, p. 139 

Travelling libraries, p. 149 



Safety, Provision for, in indus- 
try, p. 109 

Sawyer, Philetus, p. 8; suits 
against state treasurers, p. 10 

School centre idea, p. 160 



U 



United States Senators, Direct 

election of, p. 53 
University, close connection 

with public affairs, p. 30; 

widening influence of, p. 32; 



202 



INDEX 



freedom of a political issue, 
p. 35; connected with politics, 
p. 39; professors in politics, 
p. 40; standard of research in, 
p. 45; training school for pub- 
lic service, p. 46; evolution of, 
in America, p. 140; extension, 
beginning of, in Wisconsin, p. 
141; correspondence courses, 
p. 144; appropriations for, p. 
148; a means of democratizing 
knowledge, p. 151; is a state 
laboratory of research, p. 152; 
maintains department of in- 
formation, p. 153; municipal 
reference bureau, p. 154; lect- 
ure and entertainment de- 
partment, p. 155; promotes 
debates and discussions, p. 156; 
sends out package libraries, p. 
158; is a great nerve centre, 
p. 159; develops school centre 
idea, p. 160; agricultural de- 
partment, reaches out to farm- 
ers, p. 164; short course, be- 
ginning of, p. 165; courses in, 
p. 166; dairying, courses in, p. 
167; growth of long course in 
agriculture, p. 168; demand 
for agricultural students, p. 
169; farmers' course, p. 169; 
home economics, p. 170; county 
agricultural schools, p. 171; 
farm demonstration work, p. 
171; seed -growing contests, 
p. 172; attitude of legis- 
lature toward, p. 173; devel- 



opment of dairying, p. 174; 
Babcock milk test, p. 175; a 
clearing-house of farm in- 
formation, p. 176; cattle- 
breeders' association, p. 176 
growth of pure-bred stock 
p. 177; seed culture, p. 178 
experiment association, p. 179 
breeding of horses, p. 180 
effect of scientific agriculture 
on the state, p. 181 ; an experi- 
ment station in farm eugen- 
ics, p. 182; close connection 
with State House, p. 189 



Value of dairy products in Wis- 
consin, p. 174 

Van Hise, Charles R., p. 30; 
ideals of University, p. 141; 
possibilities of University, pp. 
151, 159 



W 

Ward, Edward J., p. 161 

Wisconsin ideas extended to 
other states, p. 34 

Woman suffrage, p. 62 

Women, Protection of, in in- 
dustry, p. 112 

Workmen's compensation, p. 93 
(See Industrial Commission.) 

Wrong ideas of American poli- 
tics, p. 183 



APR 30 1912 



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